Inauguration jubiliation spreads across the country

Friends and strangers across the country gathered on the streets and in schools, churches, bars and auditoriums to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama as the first African-American president of the United States. “It’s a great day to be an American,” iReporter Roger Germann said at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium, where revelers watched the inauguration on television monitors among exhibits of sharks and otters

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Japan prepares for new prime minister

Liberal Democratic Party Prime Minister Taro Aso resigned early Wednesday, setting the stage for Democratic Party of Japan leader Yukio Hatoyama to take over the reins of government. Last month, Japanese voters swept Aso’s party — which had governed Japan for nearly 50 years — from power in the wake of Japan’s worst recession since World War II

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Seth Meyers says he’ll man ‘SNL’ Update desk alone

Seth Meyers will remain the lone talking head on the “Saturday Night Live” Weekend Update desk, at least in the near future, according to the comedian. “It looks like for right now, we’re going to stick with doing it solo,” Meyers, said Monday in New York, as he was getting ready for the show’s 35th season premiere on September 26.

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Karzai maintains lead in Afghan election

Afghan President Hamid Karzai maintains a substantial lead in the country’s August presidential polls, according to partial results issued by election officials on Saturday. Out of 5,545,149 valid votes from 92.82 percent of the country’s polling stations, Karzai has 3,009,559 and his closest challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, the nation’s former foreign minister, has 1,558,591, the Independent Election Commission said.

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Afghanistan commission orders partial vote recount

Afghanistan’s Electoral Complaints Commission on Tuesday ordered a partial recount of the ballots in the August 20 presidential election. The complaints commission called on Afghanistan’s Independent Elections Commission (IEC) to conduct the audit and recount because of “clear and convincing evidence of fraud in a number of polling stations.” Most of that fraud evidence is an “exceptionally high number” of votes cast in a polling station “in relation to the number of ballots available” or an extremely high number of votes cast for only one candidate, according to the ECC.

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