The New Nation - Internet Edition

Obama appears within reach of becoming President

AP, Washington

Counting down to Election Day, Barack Obama appears within reach of becoming the nation's first black president as the epic campaign draws to a close against a backdrop of economic crisis and lingering war. John McCain, the battle-scarred warrior, holds out hope for a Truman-beats-Dewey-style upset.

Whoever wins, the country's 44th president will immediately confront some of the most difficult economic challenges since the Great Depression.

In that effort, he'll almost surely be working with a stronger Democratic majority in Congress, as well as among governors and state legislatures nationwide. GOP incumbents at every level are endangered just eight years after President Bush's election ignited talk of lasting Republican Party dominance.

It's been an extraordinary campaign of shattered records, ceilings and assumptions. Indeed, a race for the ages.

Democrat Obama has exuded confidence in the campaign's final days, reaching for a triumph of landslide proportions.

"The die is being cast as we speak," says campaign manager David Plouffe.

Undeterred, Republican McCain vows to fight on, bidding for an upset reminiscent of Democrat Harry S. Truman's stunning defeat of Thomas E. Dewey in 1948.

Looking back only to early this year, campaign manager Rick Davis says, "We are witnessing perhaps, I believe, one of the greatest comebacks since John McCain won the primary." The odds for Republicans in 2008 have been long from the start: Voters often thwart the party that's been in power for two terms. And this year, larger factors are working against the GOP: the war in Iraq, now in its sixth year, and the crisis on Wall Street and in the larger economy. Voters deeply distrust government and crave a new direction.

Republicans are girding for widespread losses.

"It's a fairly toxic atmosphere out there," said Nevada Sen. John Ensign, chairman of the Senate GOP's campaign effort. Added his House counterpart, Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole: "We haven't caught very many breaks." Democrats are looking ahead to expanded power.

"Things are looking very good," said Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the head of the House Democrats' campaign committee. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, chairman of the Senate Democrats' effort, predicted: "We're going to pick up a large number of seats, and that's going to make Democrats very happy."

The Democrats are reaching for a 60-vote Senate majority that would allow the party to overcome Republican filibusters, and could pick up two dozen or more House seats. Democrats also hope to pad their slim majority of governorships and increase their ranks in what already is their strongest majority in state legislatures in more than a decade.

The implications are far-reaching: Governors and state legislators elected Tuesday to four-year terms will help preside over the redrawing of legislative and congressional districts following the 2010 Census. The party in charge can redraw districts in its favor.

Atop the ticket, Obama leads in national and key battleground state polling, though the race appears to be tightening as it plays out primarily in states that Bush won twice. Among the unknowns: the choices of one in seven likely voters who are undecided or could still change their minds; the impact of Obama's efforts to register and woo new voters, particularly blacks and young people; the effect of Obama's race on voters just four decades after the tumult of the Civil Rights movement.

"Right now, it's very clearly Obama's to lose, and I think his chances of doing so are pretty minimal," said Republican Dick Armey, the former House majority leader from Texas. He said the possibility of a McCain comeback is "getting down to slim-to-none."

An Obama victory would amount to a wholesale rejection of the status quo: voters taking a chance on a relative newcomer to the national stage, a 47-year-old first-term senator from Chicago, rather than stick with a seasoned veteran of the party in power.

With strengthened Democratic majorities in Congress, he'd have to deal with the party's left flank while governing a country that's more conservative than liberal.

The Republican Party essentially would be in tatters, searching for both a leader and an identity.

An Obama loss - or McCain comeback - would be a crushing disappointment for Democrats in a year tailor-made for the party. It would suggest McCain's experience trumped Obama's clarion call for change, and raise troubling questions about white Americans' willingness to vote for a black man.

Blacks, in particular, might be furious and deeply suspicious of an almost sure thing that slipped away.

THE PRESIDENCY:

Tuesday's election caps a nearly two-year campaign unprecedented in many ways, merely unusual in others.

"The candidates are more interesting. The media is bigger. The technology is better. Participation has increased dramatically," said Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska who once aspired to the presidency himself. "This is the first global campaign that the United States has had. People will always remember this as an extremely important election."

From the start, the race was different: It was the first since 1928 in which neither a president nor a vice president competed.

The Democratic primary was excruciatingly long, with historic and improbable characters: Obama, a black upstart Illinois senator, against a former first lady turned New York senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

McCain, at 72 once the GOP's most vocal scold, early on was the favorite for the Republican nomination. His campaign all but imploded, then he came back to overcome multiple opponents and win the party's nomination. He chose the first woman for the national GOP ticket, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Racism, sexism and ageism all colored the campaign, to varying degrees.

Interest appeared exceptionally high across the globe, particularly in Obama. More than 200,000 people turned out to attend an Obama speech in Berlin when he made a trip abroad to bolster his foreign policy credentials. His U.S. crowds also were gargantuan; 75,000 in Portland, Ore., before he was the nominee, more than 100,000 in Denver just a week before the general election.

An estimated 42.4 million people tuned in to watch Obama and McCain accept their parties' nominations.

More voters cast ballots before Election Day than ever before. As of Saturday night, there were some 27 million absentee and early votes in 30 states. Democrats outnumbered Republicans in pre-Election Day voting in key states.

8 Pak soldiers killed in suicide attack

AFP, Peshawar

At least eight soldiers were killed Sunday in a suicide attack on a security check post in a Pakistani tribal region bordering Afghanistan, officials said.

The bomber ploughed his explosive-laden vehicle into the check post, 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, which has become a haven for Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.

"The attacker came in a pick-up truck and exploded it, killing eight security officials in the check post," local administration official Mawaz Khan told AFP.

The post was completely destroyed in the attack, he added.

A military official also confirmed the bombing, which is the latest in a series of deadly attacks in Pakistan.

Chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said the check post was near the area headquarters of the paramilitary Frontier Corps.

"The bomber in a truck hit his vehicle into the check post. Eight security officials were killed and two wounded," General Abbas told AFP.

The attack came after two missiles fired by a suspected US drone at a militant hideout near Wana killed 12 suspected rebels on Friday.

It was the second strike that evening. The first, in neighbouring North Waziristan, saw two missiles hit a pick-up truck and a house west of the town of Mir Ali, killing 20 mainly Arab militants, security officials said.

Among the dead was an Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative, Abu Jihad al-Masri, described by the United States as the terror network's propaganda chief. Washington had offered a one-million-dollar bounty for his death or capture.

The strikes were the latest in a series in the past three months that have raised tensions between Pakistan and the United States and have seen Islamabad register strong protests with US diplomats.

In response, about 250 schoolchildren held a protest march through Wana Saturday, calling for an end to "US aggression" and shouting "Death to America."

Pakistan has been hit by a wave of suicide bombings over the past year blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants based in the country's troubled frontier tribal regions.

Many have come after suspected US missile strikes or Pakistani military activity to target extremists.

On Friday, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the house of a senior police official in the town of Mardan, between the major city of Peshawar and the troubled Swat valley. At least eight people were killed.

The previous day, Pakistani troops in the northwest of the country had killed five Taliban and captured an explosives expert known to have links with Afghan insurgents.

Pakistan: Suicide car bomb kills 8 troops

UN envoy raps Israel for razing Palestinian homes

Reuters, Jerusalem

A United Nations envoy criticized Israel on Saturday for demolishing Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank, calling the practice a violation of a six-month-old moratorium and a setback to peacemaking efforts.

Israel, which took the West Bank in a 1967 war, has often demolished dwellings built there without its permission. After a Palestinian revolt erupted in 2000, Israel also razed the homes of militants but abandoned this tactic five years later.

Robert Serry, U.N. Middle East envoy, said in a statement that Israel undertook in April to suspend demolitions but recently resumed them.

An Israeli official denied there had been any moratorium.

Serry's statement deplored "the impact of these actions on some of the most vulnerable populations in the West Bank, with many poor families rendered destitute."

The demolitions, Serry said, "send a discouraging signal regarding its (Israel's) support for the strenuous and concerted effort under way to improve conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory and build greater trust and confidence in support for the political process."

The United Nations and other international powers have stepped up efforts to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas since he broke with Islamist Hamas rivals last year and revived peacemaking with Israel.

China, India will reshape the world: Murdoch

AP, Sydney

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch says the ongoing metamorphosis of China and India from historic backwaters into economic powers will help reshape the world in the next few decades.

The News Corp. chief gave an upbeat assessment of the future and made a vigorous case for free markets despite troubled economic times and what he called "naked, heartless aggression" in the world. In the first of a series of speeches in his birth country of Australia, Murdoch spoke Sunday of "the great transformation we've seen in the past few decades, the unleashing of human talent and ability across our world, and the golden age for humankind that I see just around the corner."

He said China and India are great countries whose people are only recently emerging from long histories of being "incarcerated by communism or caste." The rise of their economies is creating a new middle class that would be three billion strong within 30 years and that is setting a new benchmark for global competitiveness.

"The world has never seen this kind of advance before," Murdoch said. "These are people who have known deprivation. These are people who are intent on developing their skills, improving their lives and showing the world what they can do."

Al-Maliki stressing US departure

AP, Baghdad

Iraq's prime minister is pushing the idea that the U.S. departure is in sight in a bid to sell the security deal with Washington to Iran. To reinforce the message, the Iraqis are asking for changes to the deal that would effectively rule out extending the U.S. military presence beyond 2011.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his allies are also describing the agreement not as a formula for long-term U.S.-Iraqi security cooperation - the original goal when the talks began earlier this year.

Obama's election would send 'extraordinary signal’: Patten

AFP, Beijing

The election of a black man as president of the United States would send an "extraordinary signal" to the world, Hong Kong's last British governor said here on Saturday.

Chris Patten, now a member of Britain's House of Lords and chancellor of Oxford University, gave his endorsement to the Democratic candidate Barack Obama ahead of the US presidential election on Tuesday.

"(Obama's election) would be the most powerful declaration of what America at its best has stood for-the most globalised country in the world, because America is made up of the rest of the world," said Patten.

"I don't think it will be just the Chinese who aret gobsmacked if America elects a black man as president. "I think that the election of Senator Obama would send an extraordinary signal to the rest of the world," he said at an event in Beijing to promote his new book. Many Chinese people believe there remains strong racial discrimination in the United States and Patten was responding to a question on how China was reacting to the possible election of a black US president.

The Conservative British peer also said the United States would play a key role in shaping a new world, particularly in fighting global warming and climate change-an issue he said China would also be hugely involved in.

"At the heart of any initial movement towards a successful international agreement on climate change is bound to be the relationship between Chinat and America," he said.

Egyptian President pledges to push reform

AP, Cairo

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak promised Saturday to push ahead with economic reform and step up efforts to combat poverty, despite the impact of the international financial crisis on Egypt's economy.

In a speech to his ruling National Democratic Party convention, Mubarak also ordered the government to develop strategies to mitigate the effect of the crisis on Egypt's two main sources of income - tourism and exports.

The convention is being held amid increasing skepticism of the government, political uncertainty and worsening economic woes in the Arab world's most populous nation. "I want to stress the party's and government's commitment to economic reform and our determination to continue that without hesitation," Mubarak said in an hour-long speech.

"But, at the same time, I want to stress that social development and combating poverty is part and parcel of this vision," said Mubarak to almost 3,000 party members. He said the government will earmark the equivalent of about $660 million in the next three years to help "break the cycle of poverty."