Elections

For decades, Arab soldiers and Kurdish guerrillas battled by gun, by mortar, by rocket. Now, elections are the latest weapon in the struggle for land and power in Iraq's north. The ballot box has become a battleground in Nineveh province, a high-stakes combat zone where Kurds and Arabs will face off over the future shape of the country -- and confront each other over the past. The outcome could set the stage for another round of violence, which both sides insist that they do not want.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranian protesters defied authorities Monday and marched to Tehran's Freedom Square, as the Islamic Republic's supreme leader ordered an investigation into allegations of vote fraud, a move the opposition described as little more than an attempt to dampen anger over the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a stinging setback to the Obama administration's hopes of cultivating a better relationship with the Islamic Republic. U.S. officials insisted Saturday that they intended to press forward with their effort to engage Iran, despite their misgivings about the outcome of the election. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said U.S.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers scrambled Wednesday to avert a financial meltdown, and public officials across California braced for annihilating cuts on the day after voters trounced their leaders' rescue plan for the state. Within two hours of returning from Washington, D.C., the governor huddled behind closed doors with Democratic and Republican legislative leaders to grapple with a projected $21.

On election day, Sheik Wahid Issawi held court in his mudheef, a tribal guesthouse tucked among the family's acres of date groves and rice fields. Relatives filed in, kissed his hand and cheek and asked his guidance on how to vote in Saturday's provincial elections. His answer was simple: Choose the list of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki. If Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party proves victorious in Najaf province, the spiritual capital of Shiite Islam, the graying patriarch will have played a key role.

You would never mistake Jesse Lopez Jr. for a revolutionary. Soft-spoken, with a shy smile beneath his gray mustache, the retired school custodian and amateur mariachi singer hardly seems like an instigator. Yet if Latinos come to dominate California politics someday, Lopez will have helped make it happen.

Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of EBay Inc., has resigned from the board of directors of the online auction company and two other corporations, fueling speculation that she is preparing for a 2010 run for California governor. The resignations, which were effective Wednesday, from EBay, Procter & Gamble Co. and DreamWorks SKG were made for personal reasons, Whitman spokesman Henry Gomez said Monday. Gomez declined to comment "on anything having to do with the governor's race."

From the house we built With blood and soil To the road on which The moonlight procession Flies forth on their boat Of shooting stars It is a pity you did not wish To stay here with us The poet had crafted those words so long ago. Flush from the victory of a People's Revolution in Iran that ousted a repressive monarch for a bearded cleric who spouted promises of freedom and quality, Partow Nooriala all too soon came to believe that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had deceived them.

Neither side can drown out the other. Both so far are exercising a measure of restraint. But as authorities try to rein in Iran's most serious unrest since the Islamic Revolution, they face a diverse opposition united in its rejection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his policies.

Officials began counting ballots in presidential and parliamentary elections in Ghana. In courtyards throughout the capital, election officials put tape around plywood tables and began sorting ballots. Onlookers whooped as the stack for their choice grew taller.