Afghan panel orders partial recount
KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- The Electoral Complaints Commission Tuesday ordered a partial recount of ballots from Afghanistan's presidential elections last month.
The complaints commission asked the country's Independent Elections Commission to conduct the audit and recount because of "clear and convincing evidence of fraud in a number of polling stations," CNN reported.
The commission said most of the evidence stemmed from an "exceptionally high number" of votes cast in a polling station relative to the number of available ballots, or an extremely high number of votes cast for only one candidate.
The decision to audit and conduct a recount was made after U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry urged Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Monday to permit the investigation into vote fraud, senior State Department officials told CNN.
The ECC said it received more than 2,000 complaints since the Aug. 20 election.
As of Sunday, 74.5 percent of the votes have been tallied, CNN reported.
Obama: Work + responsibility = success
ARLINGTON, Va., Sept. 8 (UPI) -- Staying in school, overcoming setbacks and being focused will do students well as they pursue their goals, U.S. President Barack Obama said Tuesday.
All students have a talent that can only emerge by going to school and participating in school-sponsored extracurricular activities, he said from Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., to a packed gym and to nationwide audiences watching on C-SPAN or the Web.
"And no matter what you want to do with your life -- I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it," he said. "You cannot drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got to train for it and work for it and learn for it."
During the week before his speech made at an Arlington, Va., high school, Republicans and conservatives blasted the sight-unseen remarks, saying they would push a liberal agenda or promote socialism. The White House released a transcript of the speech Monday.
He exhorted students to develop talents, skills and intellect "so you can help us old folks solve our most difficult problems. If you don't do that -- if you quit on school -- you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country."
Bad circumstances outside of the classroom don't give students the right to behave badly in the classroom, be lippy to teachers or deliberately do poorly.
"There is no excuse for not trying," he said.
He also pointed out that occasional failures shouldn't impede students from setting or achieving their educational goals.
"You won't necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try. That's OK," he said. "You have to let your failures teach you."
"Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who've had the most failures," Obama said, noting novelist J.K. Rowling received rejection notices 12 times before landing a publisher for the first installment of the wildly popular "Harry Potter" series.
Families, teachers and federal officials will do what they can to ensure students have access to an education.
"But you've got to do your part, too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you," Obama said. "So don't let us down -- don't let your family or your country down. Most of all, don't let yourself down."
Obama welcomes world to Pittsburgh
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- The Group of 20 meeting of financial ministers in Pittsburgh is key to confronting the global economic crisis, U.S. President Barack Obama said.
"As the leaders of the world's largest economies, we have a responsibility to work together on behalf of sustained growth, while putting in place the rules of the road that can prevent this kind of crisis from happening again," Obama said in a statement released by the White House Tuesday. "To avoid being trapped in the cycle of bubble and bust, we must set a path for sustainable growth while steering clear of the imbalances of the past."
Financial and other ministers from the top 20 nations will meet in Pittsburgh Sept. 24-25.
The host city itself is "a bold example of how to create new jobs and industries while transitioning to a 21st century economy," Obama said. "As a city that has transformed itself from the city of steel to a center for high-tech innovation ... Pittsburgh will provide both a beautiful backdrop and a powerful example for our work."
Group asks hotel not to host Ahmadinejad
NEW YORK, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- A group with ties to the White House is lobbying to stop a tony New York hotel from housing Iranian delegates to the U.N. General Assembly, a letter shows.
No business in New York should be accommodating Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad because his country sponsors terrorism, seeks nuclear arms and advocates the destruction of Israel, said United Against Nuclear Iran, a bipartisan group that counts Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke and Middle East aide Dennis Ross as members.
"United Against Nuclear Iran has learned that the InterContinental The Barclay New York has agreed to host President Ahmadinejad and the Iranian delegation (during the U.N. visit)," the organization's President Mark Wallace wrote in a Sept. 4 letter to Barclay New York general manager Leland Lewis. The New York Post obtained a copy of the letter.
The 64th U.N. General Assembly begins next week. Ahmadinejad, in his first major trip to a Western country since his controversial re-election in June, is scheduled to address the international organization later in September. Demonstrations in Iran challenging the legitimacy of his election resulted in deaths, a government crackdown and mass trials of those arrested.
"By accommodating the Iranian delegation, the InterContinental not only endorses President Ahmadinejad's election, but also turns a blind eye to the regime's flagrant violations of human rights and its commitment to illegally developing nuclear weapons," Wallace wrote.
In his letter, Wallace urged the hotel to refuse to host Ahmadinejad and "join the international community in condemning Iran's illegal nuclear weapons program and its disregard for human rights."
Obama, Medvedev to meet at U.N. on treaty
MOSCOW, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- A new arms control treaty will be the subject of talks between the presidents of the United States and Russia at the United Nations, a Russian official says.
Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev are to meet in New York on the sidelines of the new session of the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 23 to discuss progress in the bilateral talks on a new arms treaty, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti Tuesday.
The meeting comes after Medvedev and Obama agreed in July in Moscow on the outline of a deal meant to succeed the expiring 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START-1, which envisions cutting the two countries' nuclear arsenals to between 1,500 to 1,675 operational warheads and the number of delivery vehicles to between 500 and 1,000.
An Aug. 5 telephone conversation between Obama and Medvedev reportedly confirmed their plans to prepare a new nuclear arms reduction treaty by December, when START-1 expires.
The U.S. State Department has indicated Russia has 3,909 nuclear warheads and 814 delivery vehicles, while the United States had 5,576 warheads and 1,198 delivery vehicles, RIA Novosti reported.
