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Afghans will go to the polls tomorrow

Sachin Seth
Parliamentary elections in Afghanistan will go ahead tomorrow, marred by allegations of fraud and tampering against election candidates, and, most recently, by the kidnapping of a candidate and 18 election work...
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Dozens killed on voting day in Afghanistan

Sachin Seth
As ballots are counted in Afghanistan, reports have surfaced, despite the media blackout, that at least 27 people, including nine civilians, have been killed across the country in a slew of attacks on voting day, according to Global Post.
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Afghan election will bring victory for Karzai

Sachin Seth
A few weeks ago it seemed like Afghanistan’s main candidates for president, the incumbent Hamid Karzai and his former foreign minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, were locked in a dead heat, running side by side toward that coveted post; to govern a country rocked by economic troubles and war.
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Civilians attack Taliban to avenge mosque bombing

Sachin Seth
An angry, armed mob attacked five villages and destroyed 20 houses suspected to belong to Taliban forces. Seven Taliban fighters were killed in the surge and the villagers now occupy three villages and are attempting to push the Taliban out of the other two.
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Swat Valley violence carries on

Sachin Seth
Pakistan’s Swat Valley has become the site of yet another humanitarian crisis as nearly half a million inhabitants flee in efforts to escape the battle between the Taliban and government troops, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
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Taliban moving closer to Pakistan capital

Sachin Seth
The Taliban is slowly trying to make its way toward Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. The Pakistani armed forces have been verbally scolded by both American officials and Pakistani politicians over their lack of action and unwillingness to shift troops from the India-Pakistan border to help concentrate on combating the Taliban threat.
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3/8: Stem Cells, Cuba, and the Taliban

Trevor Francis
The Bush Era stem cell funding ban will be lifted on Monday.
March 7 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s expected reversal of an 8-year-old restriction on U.S. funding for embryonic stem cell research has excited scientists and health advocates who say the action will accelerate the search for cures to major illness. Obama plans to lift the funding ban, imposed by former President George W. Bush, in a March 9 signing ceremony, said two government officials, who spoke yesterday on condition of anonymity. Bush objected to the use of the tissue because the process caused the destruction of human embryos.
In a wide ranging NYT interview, Obama mulls reaching out to elements of the Taliban.
WASHINGTON — President Obama declared in an interview that the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan and opened the door to a reconciliation process in which the American military would reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq. Mr. Obama pointed to the success in peeling Iraqi insurgents away from more hard-core elements of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a strategy that many credit as much as the increase of American forces with turning the war around in the last two years. “There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region,” he said, while cautioning that solutions in Afghanistan will be complicated.
He will also start easing restrictions on trade and travel to Cuba.
President Barack Obama is poised to offer an olive branch to Cuba in an effort to repair the US's tattered reputation in Latin America. The White House has moved to ease some travel and trade restrictions as a cautious first step towards better ties with Havana, raising hopes of an eventual lifting of the four-decade-old economic embargo. Several Bush-era controls are expected to be relaxed in the run-up to next month's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago to gild the president's regional debut and signal a new era of "Yankee" cooperation. The administration has moved to ease draconian travel controls and lift limits on cash remittances that Cuban-Americans can send to the island, a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of families.