Weekend News Digest

Kurdish opposition groups are complaining of violations in Saturday’s parliamentary and presidential vote, the first time Kurds have directly elected a leader of their mostly autonomous region, but voting officials say the poll was largely sound.

Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) said the preliminary results would come on Monday evening, according to a statement from the government’s media center.

Mohammad Qasim Fahim, the former head of an alliance that toppled the Taliban in 2001, was ambushed on a road in northern Kunduz province where he was campaigning on Karzai’s behalf for the August 20 poll, said senior campaign official Zalmai Mujadidi.

Kunduz governor Mohammad Omar said Fahim was traveling by road to the adjacent Takhar province on Sunday afternoon when his convoy was attacked by insurgents.

U.S. tax authorities want to force UBS to disclose the identity of an estimated 52,000 U.S. holders of secret Swiss accounts suspected of dodging taxes, even though this breaches Swiss bank secrecy laws.

A possible compromise involving the names of account-holders visited by Swiss bankers would identify about 10,000 people, Swiss weekly Sonntags-Zeitung said.

A security source told Reuters that Hazem Al-Braikan appeared to have died from a single gunshot wound to the side of the head, while a policeman standing outside Braikan’s house said the well-connected financier, 37, had shot himself.

Braikan was the chief executive of Al Raya Investment, which is 10 percent owned by Citigroup Inc, and had been at the center of a financial scandal that erupted last week.

And after the third call or so, I managed to track down the mystery Kuwaiti who spoke perfect English and always bragged about his work.

Hazem Khaled al-Braikan, who died from a single gunshot wound to the head on Sunday in what police said was an apparent suicide, was at the center of a lawsuit the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched against him and other Gulf Arab finance firms. He was 37.

Honduran troops manning checkpoints have prevented several thousand demonstrators from staging a show of support at the border for the leftist leader, now exiled in Nicaragua.

Six miles from the border, 100 weary protesters milled around the coffee town of El Paraiso, a far cry from the massive outpouring of public backing Zelaya had called for.

Instead, the itinerant terrorist landed in the hands of the FBI and was flown back to New York to face justice.

Months before President Barack Obama took office with a pledge to change U.S. counterterrorism policies, the Bush administration gave Vinas all the rights of American criminal suspects.

The European Medicines Agency, the EU’s top drug regulatory body, is accelerating the approval process for swine flu vaccine, and countries such as Britain, Greece, France and Sweden say they’ll start using the vaccine after it’s greenlighted – possibly within weeks.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization’s flu chief, warned about the potential dangers of untested vaccines, although he stopped short of criticizing Europe’s approach outright.

Both sides said they want to improve the system and provide care for almost 50 million Americans who lack health insurance coverage, but they remain deeply divided over how to reach that goal. Republicans said the longer the delay, the more the public understands the stakes of a policy that has vexed lawmakers for decades.

“Republicans want to protect the right of Americans to make their own health care decisions, to pick their own doctors and their own plans,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. “We could have a plan in a few weeks if the goal is not a government takeover. We’ve never seen the government operate a plan of any kind effectively and at the budgets we talked about.”

A few things are known: She is scheduled to speak Aug. 8 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, and has said she plans to write a book, campaign for political candidates from coast to coast and build a right-of-center coalition.

She also plans to continue speaking her mind on the social networking site Twitter.

Military doctors quickly performed a battery of tests on the 54-year-old president who is known for his hyperactivity. The Elysee palace said Sarkozy’s test results were normal but that doctors would keep him under cardiological observation until Monday.

His office denied that Sarkozy had lost consciousness in the episode. The Elysee Palace statement followed reports from members of Sarkozy’s government and his chief of staff who had indicated that Sarkozy had lost consciousness.

Records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act show the public is paying to offset bank losses on small business loans across the country, from a convenience store in the tiny Canadian border town of Houlton, Maine, to a graphic arts design company on the island of Hawaii, more than 5,000 miles away.

Despite having loans written off, little companies such as Caffe Sportivo, an espresso shop and small gym in Redwood City, Calif., are barely scraping by.

Iranian authorities have pressured the families of slain protesters not to mourn publicly out of fear the gatherings could spark the kind of demonstrations that followed the June 12 presidential vote, according to the opposition.

Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and fellow pro-reform presidential candidate, Mahdi Karroubi, sent a request to the Interior Ministry to hold a memorial service in Tehran’s Mosalla mosque Thursday to commemorate the end of the 40-day mourning cycle for at least 10 people killed on June 20, Mousavi’s top aide Ali Reza Beheshti told the Associated Press.

Ultimately, how well the U.S. efforts succeed could help determine how fast the economy recovers and how many U.S. jobs might be created once it does.

Other issues, such as climate control and North Korean nuclear ambitions, also will command attention. Few expect the talks to bridge the sharp differences between Beijing and Washington. But both governments want to use the occasion to help build a less confrontational relationship.

Authorities accused Sufi Muhammad, father-in-law of Swat’s notorious Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah, of encouraging violence and terrorism.

The peace deal in February imposed Sharia, or Islamic law, in the valley in exchange for an end to two years of fighting. But it was widely seen as handing over control of the valley, once a popular tourist destination, to the Taliban.

Lobbyists.

The drug industry, the American Medical Association, hospital groups and the insurance lobby are all saying Congress must make major changes this year. Television ads paid for by drug companies and insurers continued to emphasize the benefits of a health care overhaul – not the groups’ objections to some of the proposals.

Groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International backed a global day of action, with protests planned in more than 80 cities, including several in the United States.

The protesters want Iranian authorities to release what they say are hundreds, or even thousands, of people detained during protests that followed the presidential election last month that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.

U.S. and NATO troops are attacking drug warehouses in Afghanistan for the first time this year, a new strategy to counter the country’s booming opium poppy and heroin trade. NATO defense ministers approved the targeted drug raids late last year, saying the link between Taliban insurgents and drug barons was clear.

U.N. officials say Taliban fighters reap hundreds of millions of dollars from the drug trade each year, profits used to fund the insurgency.

Born Bernie Lazar Hoffman, the 74-year-old faces up to 175 years behind bars following his conviction Friday on 10 counts of transporting young girls across state lines for sexual purposes. Some jurors wept while women described being molested by and forced into sex with their decades-older pastor.

Among many who’ve watched Alamo’s handiwork since the 1970s – which produced allegations including kidnapping, brainwashing, child abuse, tax evasion and threatening a federal judge – there was never any doubt the street-hustler-turned-pastor should be locked away for good. Their question is, what took so long?

“The LAPD that through much of its history was maligned and criticized is now moving into the 21st century as a leader in creating positive change,” Chief William Bratton declared after a federal judge this month freed his department from oversight by the U.S. Justice Department.

The assessment is a far cry from the reputation that allowed Hollywood to serve up such gritty LA cop tales as “Training Day” and “The Shield” in the aftermath of a decade that included the 1991 Rodney King Beating, the 1992 riot and finally an episode that became known as Rampart.

The recession is forcing districts to lay off teachers even as the economic stimulus pumps billions of dollars into schools. As a result, classrooms across the country will be more crowded when school starts in the fall.

Patti Hathorn, a fifth-grade teacher in rural Pinson, Ala., is expecting 29 or 30 students, making it the biggest class she’s taught. Many of her students at Kermit Johnson Elementary are learning English or are in special education.

It was the first bird singing competition of the morning, and men on either side of the two cages counted the songs, each as fleeting as a haiku. The first finch to tweet 50 would be declared the winner.

For years, bird racing, as the sport is known, has been held in a park in the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Queens on warm Sunday afternoons with scant attention from outsiders.

The nation’s most drought-stricken state is deep-frying under relentless 100-degree days and waterways are drying up, especially in the hardest-hit area covering about 350 miles across south-central Texas. That’s making folks worried about the water supply – and how long it might last.

“The water table’s fallin’ and fallin’ and fallin,’ like a whole lot of other people around here,” said Wendell McLeod, general manager of Liberty Hill Water Supply Corp. and a 60-year resident of the town northwest of Austin. “This is the worst I can recall seeing it. I tell you, it’s just pretty bleak.”

“We share the same core values,” he said while noting their personalities are different.

That fact hasn’t been lost on the people who deal the most with the governor’s office. State lawmakers are looking for a better relationship after a rocky few months with Palin since she returned from the 2008 presidential campaign.

Lawmakers wrapped up a nearly 24-hour session Friday afternoon by approving most of a complicated package of spending cuts, raids on local government funds and accounting maneuvers designed to eliminate a $26 billion budget shortfall.

But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders said they might have to deal with more red ink in a few months if the state’s economy doesn’t turn around.

Out here, though, the only signs of danger are the ones warning drivers to watch out for moose. Could it be he senses a threat we’re not seeing?

“Not expecting,” says the swordsman, who calls himself Doobie, grinning broadly. “Just ready.”

For a sip of hot chocolate and his preferred pastry fix, the 32-year-old Manhattan lawyer has driven 100 miles to Meriden, Conn., to what was then the closest Tim Hortons, a beloved Canadian chain that sells coffee and baked goods.

Abella, a Toronto native, now has an easier time satisfying his cravings. Earlier this month, Tim Hortons opened its first New York City locations, replacing 11 Dunkin’ Donuts in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

“We have received a total of 42 bodies,” Awwal Isa, a nurse at Bauchi Specialist Hospital in the northern city of Bauchi where the violence took place, told AFP by telephone.

They were victims of “fighting between security personnel and members of the Taliban,” he said, alluding to the sect founded in Nigeria in 2004 with a mission to set up a strict Islamic state in Nigeria.

AFP’s departure means that Scottish publishers D. C. Thomson’s London bureau is the last remaining newsroom in the industry’s spiritual home, now overtaken by investment banks and legal offices.

It is a far cry from 30 years ago, when Fleet Street, a narrow east-west road near Saint Paul’s Cathedral, was the bustling heart of the British newspaper industry.

“I use homeopathy, Chinese herbs and acupuncture,” said the 50-year-old veterinarian, who practices at “South Paws” in Fairfax, Virginia just outside the US capital Washington.

“It’s the same type of needle as for people. The basic acupuncture channels are the same. Acupuncture pathways mirror the nervous system and stimulate it the same way.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel was among the many guests welcomed by Eva Wagner-Pasquier, 64, and her half-sister, Katharina Wagner, 31, who this year have taken over the joint running of the legendary month-long festival dedicated to the works of their great-grandfather, Richard Wagner.

Among the other ministers arriving at the Festspielhaus theatre, built to Wagner’s own designs, were Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer and Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen.

The elite force and an affiliated volunteer militia, the Basij, led the crackdown against street protesters who claim mass fraud in the June 12 election after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner in a landslide. At least 20 protesters have been killed in clashes and hundreds detained.

The Revolutionary Guard weighed in at key moments of the crisis.

The opposition front called “Change” was at the heart of a push for reform in a bid to shake up the political establishment in Iraq’s three Kurdish-ruled provinces that have been dominated by two parties for decades.

Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission said 78 percent of 2.5 million eligible voters cast ballots during Saturday’s elections. The high turnout apparently was fueled by excitement over the rare show of opposition to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which have been accused of corruption, intimidation and failing to provide services.

Yet these fashions come from Lebanon, a tiny Arab country of 4 million on the Mediterranean. This nation better known for military conflicts than the arts has produced an impressive crop of designers, such as Reem Acra and Elie Saab, whose work is showcased at celebrity events such as the Oscars and the Golden Globes.

“Lebanon’s name has always been synonymous with war, but when it comes to fashion … these designers really make us proud,” said Laura Seikaly, 39, who was among a recent crowd of bikini-clad sunbathers on a beach north of Beirut. “I guess it comes from the society itself, the way Lebanese women dress. They’re very courageous, even more than Europeans.”

If not for the free medicine she receives, she would be dead, the 35-year-old widow said as she waited for her monthly visit. “I had no money, my house was destroyed by (Cyclone) Nargis, I had nowhere else to go.”

The modest one-story wooden clinic, one of two dozen run by international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, is on the front lines of Myanmar’s struggle against HIV/AIDS, a disease that often spells a slow death sentence for Burmese because of a shortage of antiretroviral medicines. As foreign donors largely shunned this isolated military-run nation, its AIDS epidemic, one of the most serious in Asia, steadily worsened out of the spotlight.

Chinese officials have complained for years that steel companies paid too much for foreign iron ore, failing to translate China’s position as the world’s biggest steel producer into clout at the bargaining table. A state-sanctioned industry group was brought in to fix that by taking over price talks. But the China Iron & Steel Association was tripped up, Chinese state media say, because its bottom line was leaked to Rio.

“The arrest of the Rio Tinto employees earlier this month appears to be the latest salvo in an ongoing battle between CISA and the major Chinese steel mills,” the Chinese newspaper Economic Observer said.

Outgoing Communist President Vladimir Voronin, who wants to remain close to the levers of power after stepping down, has warned Moldovans that a vote against his party on Wednesday will place the ex-Soviet state in danger of extinction.

Voronin dissolved parliament last month and called the election after opposition parties twice thwarted his plan to have parliament elect his handpicked successor as new president.

Malam Bacai Sanha, who was interim president 1999-2000, is widely tipped to beat Kumba Yala, whose record in power between 2000 and 2003 left bitter memories in the former Portuguese colony, which has endured years of coups and political violence.

Already desperately poor and struggling to secure aid money and lure investors, Guinea-Bissau suffered tit-for-tat assassinations of its army chief and his arch-enemy President Joao Bernardo Vieira in March.

Ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani meanwhile came out publicly to deny the Islamic republic is in the throes of a power struggle.

No official reason was given for the sacking of Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie, which comes just a few weeks before Ahmadinejad, re-elected for another four year term in a disputed vote last month, is due to finalise his new cabinet line-up.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it was deploying 125 more troops in Afghanistan on Monday following a surge in deaths this month that has seen the overall toll overtake that suffered during the war in Iraq.

Meanwhile Brown and Obama held telephone talks on the situation in Afghanistan and stressed the importance of “better military and civilian burden-sharing with NATO allies,” a Downing Street spokesman said.

President Kurmanbek Bakiyev won re-election with more than 85 percent of the vote, the Central Asian state’s election commission announced, trouncing all challengers, as independent experts had predicted he would.

The official landslide victory by Bakiyev, 59, came a month after Kyrgyzstan secured more than 300 million dollars from the United States for the continued use of an airbase there crucial to supplying US troops in Afghanistan.

The August 20 presidential vote, only the second in Afghan history, is seen as a crucial test in the nearly eight-year effort led by the United States and NATO to stabilise Afghanistan since the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban.

Thousands of newly deployed foreign troops have flooded into southern Afghanistan to try to wrest back Taliban strongholds, but the resulting surge in soldiers’ deaths has created a backlash in Western nations.

The Republican Party lightning rod has been touted as a potential adversary for President Barack Obama in 2012, but with continued ethics probes, outsized legal bills, and growing doubts about her ability to govern dogging her, it is unclear if her farewell is a precursor to a Washington career or a political finale.

Palin, 45, has been participating in an annual series of picnics in her hometown of Wasilla since Friday, when she told a crowd of more than 1,000 she was grateful for the backing she has received from Alaskans amid mounting pressure from critics after she abruptly announced her resignation on July 3.

At lunch hour outside the smelters near Lubumbashi, the gritty capital of southern Congo’s mining country, workers in fraying clothes and canvas sneakers rattle off complaints about their Chinese employers: wages of as little as $3 a day, backbreaking hours and a lack of safety equipment, which many said had led to severe on-the-job injuries and even deaths.

“We don’t have a choice but to keep working. Life is hard, and we have to survive,” said Andre, 26, whose younger brother died in an accident last year while toiling on the graveyard shift at a private, Chinese-owned smelter. While raking a slag pit early one morning, a sudden noise startled 21-year-old Akahika, who lost his balance, fell into the scorching slag and was burned to death almost instantly.

The results could shift the often-fractious relationship between the Kurdistan Regional Government and Iraq’s central government in Baghdad . Negotiations over territory and oil, however, are on the back burner on the streets of Irbil and Sulaimaniya.

Charges of pervasive corruption and a perception that members of the ruling government have enriched themselves while in office have many Kurds getting behind the simply named “Change” party.

The election appeared to take place smoothly without serious complaints from parties or voters, though two opposition parties raised questions late Saturday about whether soldiers tried to cast multiple ballots and whether greeters at polling places showed too much support for incumbents.

Those questions could lead to unrest in coming days when Iraq’s Independent Electoral Commission discloses results, party leaders suggested.

“We will keep to the policy of launching ‘pre-emptive strikes’ against and cracking down on enemies with an iron first to curb violent criminality,” Nur Berkri, the chairman of the regional government, said Friday, according to Xinhua, the official news agency.

Chinese officials maintain that their policies of resettling ethnic Han Chinese in the traditional homeland of the Muslim minority aren’t to blame, and they continue to accuse U.S.-based Uighurs for the protests, which erupted into violence July 5 .

Now, in a cruel twist of fate, the accomplished Iraqi artist is being treated like a terrorist by the U.S., the country where he sought refuge.

U.S. officials have told him they can’t give him permanent residency in Denver because of messenger work he did as a teenager for the same political party that counts the current prime minister of Iraq as a member.

“The coup leaders are making a mockery of the presidents of the Americas and I want to know how the presidents of the Americas will respond,” he told a few dozens supporters as he sat on the hood of a car in this rural Nicaraguan border town.

He also called on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to take a firm stand on the crisis that has both Zelaya and his rival, Roberto Micheletti , claiming to be the sole leader of the nation of 7.8 million. “I want to know what the United States’ real position [is] on this coup,” he said.

Some Fort Carson, Colo.-based soldiers have had trouble adjusting to life back in the United States, saying they refused to seek help, or were belittled or punished for seeking help. Others say they were ignored by their commanders, or coped through drug and alcohol abuse before they allegedly committed crimes, The Gazette of Colorado Springs said.

The Gazette based its report on months of interviews with soldiers and their families, medical and military records, court documents and photographs.

Fear was the only thing the white police officer and black scholar had in common. Soon their many differences would collide, exploding into a colossal misunderstanding.

How could things go so wrong? How could two by all accounts decent men start a fire that drew comparisons to the O.J. Simpson case and knocked President Barack Obama off his racial tightrope?

The repair by flight controllers, albeit temporary, came as a great relief to NASA.

Even if the carbon dioxide-removal system had remained broken, shuttle Endeavour would not have had to undock early from the international space station, said flight director Brian Smith. But the system needs to work to support six station residents over the long term, he said.

Scott Roeder, 51, is charged with one count of first-degree murder in Tiller’s death and two counts of aggravated assault for allegedly threatening two ushers who tried to stop him during the May 31 melee in the foyer of the doctor’s church.

Unless the defense waives the preliminary hearing set for Tuesday, prosecutors must convince a judge that they have enough evidence to merit a trial. Roeder would then enter a plea.

And that wasn’t all.

“I had really odd thoughts,” recalled the woman, now 21, who asked that her name not be used. While walking across campus at the University of Southern Maine, “sometimes I’d feel like people were just right behind me (who might) jump me or something.”

The decision came in the case of Afghan prisoner Mohammed Jawad, who had asked a federal judge in Washington to order his release from the U.S. military prison in Cuba.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission has said Jawad was only about 12 when arrested in 2002, but the Pentagon disputes that and has said bone scans indicated he had turned 18 when sent to Guantanamo in early 2003.

Announcements over the last week by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley of a return to mega compensation pools are seen by some as a sign of health. For others, they mark a worrying throwback.

When Wall Street tipped into the abyss last year, dragging the country’s economy with it, popular and much political anger was directed at so-called fat cat executives — individuals paid fortunes with little regard to their performance.