Elections | featured news

Jay-Z and Kanye West's recent hit "Niggas in Paris" is about them. They rap about being so phenomenally rich, about how they "ball so hard," buy Rolexes and cars, pop gold bottles with models in Paris nightclubs, that the rest of us slobs couldn't fathom their lives.

Egypt's election commission has released a final list of 13 candidates eligible to run in next month's presidential elections.

President-elect Vladimir Putin tried to distance himself from the fraud-tainted ruling United Russia party on Tuesday, announcing he was stepping down as its chairman.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was narrowly beaten into second place in presidential elections Sunday, as the National Front candidate Marine Le Pen posted the best result ever for a far-right candidate, the Interior Ministry announced with all the votes counted Monday.

Far-rightist Marine Le Pen threw France's presidential race wide open on Sunday by scoring nearly 20 percent in the first round - votes that may determine the runoff between Socialist favorite Francois Hollande and conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s disbarred presidential candidate, Khairat el Shater, said Wednesday that Egypt’s military rulers have no intention of truly handing power over to civilian rule, but instead are trying to rig the election outcome in their favor.

Egypt’s presidential commission announced Saturday that 10 of the 23 presidential hopefuls would be disqualified from the race. Those barred from running include the popular ultra-conservative Salafist preacher Hazem Abu Ismail; the Muslim Brotherhood’s top candidate and strategist, Khairat el Shater; and Omar Suleiman, spy chief under former president Hosni Mubarak.

The intensity of the initial skirmishes in the campaign between President Obama and Mitt Romney underscores a new reality about presidential politics. What happens in the months before Labor Day and the candidates’ debates in the fall will shape the race and, if history is a guide, determine who wins in November.

With China’s propaganda apparatus in overdrive as the Communist Party demolishes the reputation of one of its former stars, a few defiant and angry fans are sticking to their guns. “We support the Chongqing Model and Bo Xilai,” declared a call to arms posted on the Web site of the Progress Society, a pugnacious “new left” fraternity that trumpets the ousted Chongqing Party boss as a hero. Its logo features a panda wearing a Mao cap and clutching a rifle in front of a Chinese flag.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday said he was considering bringing forward by a year the presidential election set for 2014 to reduce the pressure on the conflict-plagued country during the period when majority of NATO coalition troops are scheduled to withdraw.