At the Polls, Britons Have Bad News for the Coalition

One year ago, British voters made history by forcing rival politicians into the first coalition government since the end of World War II. And they celebrated the first anniversary of that event on Friday by delivering verdicts in a series of elections that could yet tear that same coalition government apart.

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Peru’s Presidential Vote: Looking Out for No. 2

Alfredo Salazar says he has never really been too interested in politics and never saw himself attending a campaign-closing rally in Lima, Peru’s bustling capital. But the 48-year old shop owner did just that on April 5, pushing his way into the crowd in a downtown plaza to listen to Ollanta Humala, the leading candidate in a field of 10 running for President of Peru this Sunday

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Uruguay headed for presidential runoff next month

A former guerrilla fighter jailed for 14 years and an ex-president were headed for a runoff next month for the presidency of Uruguay, after neither was expected to capture more than 50 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election. Mujica had led in two polls last week, but both showed him falling short of the 50-percent-plus-one vote he needed to win outright.

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Strong turnout as Japanese head to polls

Lines at polling places spilled out into Tokyo streets Sunday as Japanese citizens showed up in droves to vote in a parliamentary election that is expected to yield a historic shift in political power. With fours hours left until polls closed, 41 percent of eligible voters had cast ballots. While the number is slightly lower than the last elections in 2005, absentee ballots were 162 percent higher this time round, officials said

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Political shift likely as Japanese head to polls

Voters in Japan will turn out for parliamentary elections Sunday in what poll after poll shows will be a historic shift in political power to oust the ruling party. The Liberal Democratic Party has been in nearly continuous control of Japan’s parliament for more than five decades. But the country’s worst economic crisis since World War II has led a normally sedate electorate to the polls, disgruntled with how slowly the country is emerging from the downturn.

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GM and German Government Still Wrangling Over Opel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s race to save automaker Opel — and the jobs of its 25,000 employees in Germany — is beginning to look like a high-speed pileup that could cost her at the polls. To get talks with Opel owners General Motors back on track, Merkel is reportedly ready to abandon her previous plan to force GM to sell a controlling stake in its European business to a consortium of Canadian-Austrian car-parts maker Magna International and Russia’s Sberbank

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Voter gripes abound as Afghans count presidential ballots

More than 200 allegations of irregularities in last week’s presidential elections in Afghanistan have been registered, according to the independent commission set up to handle such complaints. Despite domestic accusations from one of the presidential candidates that the vote was rigged, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan called the election “a very well-organized campaign.” “The Afghan-led independent electoral commission looks like it managed a pretty good process,” Ambassador Karl Eikenberry said Sunday

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