Taliban

Presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah claimed victory on Tuesday in Afghanistan's disputed election, blaming fraud for putting him behind poll rival Ashraf Ghani in preliminary results.
      
"We are proud, we respect the votes of the people, we were the winner," Abdullah told thousands of cheering supporters gathered in Kabul.
      

Former World Bank economist Ashraf Ghani won Afghanistan's presidential election, according to preliminary results July 7, but his poll rival Abdullah Abdullah rejected the outcome as "a coup against the will of the people."

U.S. Charge D'Affaires ad interim in Bucharest Duane Butcher on Monday thanked Romania and the Romanian troops for a job well done in Afghanistan.

Der Spiegel reporter Hasnain Kazim has said the death threats he has received in Turkey were even “worse than Taliban.”

The campaign team of Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah on Sunday released audio recordings which they said contained evidence of fraud against a senior member of the country's Independent Election Commission (IEC).
      

Iran and world powers enter a critical fifth round of nuclear talks in Vienna on June 16 amid reports Tehran and Washington may use the occasion to discuss cooperation in Iraq.

Eleven people, including election workers, were killed in Afghanistan when a roadside bomb blew up their bus, the governor of the northern province of Samangan said on June 15.

Afghans headed back to the polls on Saturday for a second round of voting to elect a successor to President Hamid Karzai in a decisive test of Afghanistan's ambitions to transfer power democratically for the first time in its tumultuous history. 

Afghans headed to the polls on Saturday morning to choose a successor to President Hamid Karzai in a second round of presidential elections. 

The run-off election is the second voting day in less than three months after no candidate won more than 50% in the April poll.

By Nikos Xydakis

The conquest of Mosul by Sunni Islamist militants this week and the seizure of the Kirkuk oil hub by Kurdish forces show that Iraq is heading toward a breakup and that the borders of the Middle East country will sooner or later be redrawn. However, before such a breakup becomes reality, we may see the broader region dragged into the fighting.