Men and women cast their ballots for Russia's parliamentary elections at a polling station in Moscow, Dec. 2.

MOSCOW, Dec. 2--Russians voted Sunday in a parliamentary election set to hand President Vladimir Putin’s party a crushing majority and boost his bid to retain authority after leaving the Kremlin.
Polling stations opened in a wave across the world’s biggest country, starting on the Pacific coast before reaching the capital Moscow nine time zones away, following an election campaign overshadowed by accusations of rigging in favor of Putin’s United Russia party, AFP said.
Eleven parties participated but opinion polls predicted United Russia would secure at least two thirds of seats in the 450-seat State Duma, with the Communists a distant second, and other votes divided between Kremlin-friendly parties.
Pro-Western liberal parties are forecast to win no seats at all for the first time since the 1991 Soviet collapse.
Putin, who is required by the constitution to step down next year after two Kremlin terms, heads United Russia’s candidate list and says victory would give him a “moral“ mandate after leaving office, fueling speculation he intends to retain power.
In an election-eve speech Putin warned Russians to vote for United Russia or risk “disintegration“ of their country.
Huge revenues from energy exports and a steadily improving standard of living have made Putin widely popular with Russians, although his few remaining open critics say the ex-KGB officer is sliding into dictatorship.
Russia’s increasingly beleaguered opposition forces, ranging from liberals to the Communists, cried foul even before voting started.

BAGHDAD, Iraq,
Dec. 2--Kurdish officials insisted on Sunday that there had been no Turkish military incursion into northern Iraq, describing as baseless Ankara’s claims that significant losses had been inflicted on Kurdish rebels.
The Turkish military said on Saturday it had launched an “intensive intervention“ to hit the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Iraq’s mountainous north, reported Reuters.
A Turkish military official said about 100 special forces troops had crossed into Iraq and that long-range artillery and up to six helicopters had bombed a PKK camp after spotting a group of 50-60 rebels 20 km inside the border.
Jabbar Yawar, a spokesman for Kurdistan’s Peshmerga security forces said there had been no incursion or shelling by Turkish forces into northern Iraq.
Yawar also said there were no casualties in the area.
US military spokesman Major Winfield Danielson said in Baghdad that US forces in Iraq were still checking but had so far not received any reports of an incursion by Turkey.
A PKK official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters in Sulaimaniya in northern Iraq that the Turkish military’s claims were “lies and false allegations.“
Ankara has massed up to 100,000 troops near the mountainous border with northern Iraq, backed by tanks, artillery and warplanes ahead of a long-awaited strike against Kurdish rebels who use bases in northern Iraq to launch attacks in Turkey.
On Friday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said the cabinet had authorized the armed forces to conduct a cross-border operation.
About 3,000 PKK rebels, seeking a separate Kurdish homeland in southeastern Turkey, operate in northern Iraq. Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people since it began its armed struggle in 1984.

GAZA CITY, Occupied Palestine, Dec. 2--Petrol stations shut across the Gaza Strip on Sunday as Israel continued to provide only restricted quantities of fuel to the Hamas-run territory, industry officials and witnesses said.
“Sorry, no fuel, no benzine, no petrol,“ read a typical sign posted at a Gaza City petrol station.
“All stations in Gaza have been shut down because there is no fuel of any kind,“ Mahmud Al-Khuzudnar, a deputy chief of a Gaza association for petrol stations, told AFP.
Israel, which provides Gaza with all its fuel, has delivered only restricted supplies since October 28 and Khuzudnar said that the association was not releasing for sale the quantities received on Sunday in protest of the cuts.
Khuzudnar said that 60,000 liters of diesel came through via Israel on Sunday instead of the 350,000 liters that are needed on a daily basis.
“We are not putting the 60,000 liters on sale to protest at the cutbacks,“ Khuzudnar said, adding that the fuel would go into storage.
Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups had appealed to Israel’s Supreme Court to halt the restrictions, calling them an act of illegal collective punishment that endangered civilians.
But on Friday the court said the state could continue with the cuts, saying it was possible to do so without affecting the humanitarian situation in the territory, home of 1.5 million Palestinians.
Since the Islamist movement Hamas violently seized power in Gaza in mid-June, Israel has tightened restrictions on the movement of people and of goods--fuel included--in an out of the impoverished, overcrowded territory.
The restrictions have sparked concern that the humanitarian situation in the territory, where the vast majority of people depend on aid, would deteriorate.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Dec. 2--Former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto said Sunday an opposition boycott of upcoming polls would only help President Pervez Musharraf legitimize his imposition of emergency rule.
Bhutto said she would meet early next week with former rival Nawaz Sharif, who has called for a boycott of the January 8 election, to discuss the issue, AFP said.
“If we all boycott elections, then it will give Musharraf a two-thirds majority in the parliament to validate his provisional constitutional order,“ she told a press conference in northwestern city of Peshawar, an Islamic political stronghold.
“That is why we are saying that we will take part in elections under protest, but we will also leave the door open (to talks on a boycott).“
“I am getting conflicting signals from Nawaz Sharif and Qazi Hussain Ahmad about (an) election boycott as they have filed nomination papers and if someone does that it means he is taking part in election,“ Bhutto told reporters.
Bhutto made the comments after launching the election campaign of her Pakistan Peoples Party here on Saturday.
She said she had decided to take part in elections despite fears they would be rigged by the government.
“They (the government) have a plan to rig the elections. They have created improvised or ghost polling stations and also have a plan to steal thousands of ballot papers a night before election and give them to their candidates,“ she said.
She accused the government of making “bulk“ transfers of key officials ahead of the elections and said mayors from the former government were misusing public funds.
“The government should suspend all mayors and cancel transfers (of officials),“ she added.

CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec. 2--Venezuelan voters were to decide Sunday whether to give President Hugo Chavez wider powers, including limitless re-election, in a referendum seen as too close to call.
Chavez, a fiercely anti-US leader who has run his oil-rich country for the past eight years, has accused any who challenge the reforms of being “traitors,“ AFP reported.
He has also warned he would cut off all oil exports if violence breaks out during or after polling, claiming the United States was fomenting unrest.
Opposition has grown to the 39 changes he has proposed to Venezuela’s constitution, with university students being joined by former Chavez allies.
Street protests in the lead-up to the vote, many brutally dispersed by teargas-firing police, culminated Thursday in a mass rally in which demonstrators said Chavez was trying to establish a Cuba-like communist state in the mold of his mentor, Fidel Castro. Surveys suggested a near-even split among the country’s 16 million voters who will be casting ballots between 6:00 am and 4:00 pm.
Chavez, in a news conference Saturday that apparently broke electoral rules banning campaigning on the eve of polling, confirmed he would halt oil exports if he saw US meddling.
“There will be no oil for anyone, and the price per barrel will go up to 200 dollars,“ he said.
Venezuela, an OPEC member, currently exports around 60 percent of its oil to the United States. The trade is worth $37 billion a year at current prices, and supplies about 11 percent of US oil needs.
The leftwing leader, a 53-year-old former soldier, wants to impose “economic socialism“ on Venezuela through his reforms.
The measures include lengthening his mandate from six years to seven, doing away with term limits, allowing the government to censor the media in times of emergency, and permitting the expropriation of property.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Dec. 2--Afghan and foreign troops battled with Taliban militants and called in airstrikes in a series of clashes in the country’s south that left 40 insurgents dead, an official said Sunday.
The joint force clashed with militants in the mountainous Shah Wali Kot district in Kandahar province during a three-day operation that ended Saturday and left 35 insurgents dead, said provincial police chief Sayed Agha Saqib, reported AP.
Ten other insurgents were detained near the militants’ mountainous hide-outs, which they used to launch attacks against Afghan and foreign troops in the area, Saqib said.
Authorities recovered the militants’ bodies along with their automatic weapons and ammunition, he said.
In Kandahar’s Zhari district, Afghan and foreign troops clashed with another group of militants hiding in a compound Saturday night, killing five militants and detaining four others, Saqib said.
Among those killed was a regional militant commander, Mullah Faizullah, he said.
There were no casualties among Afghan or foreign troops during the operations, Saqib said.
The reports could not be independently verified because the areas are remote and inaccessible.
This year has been the most violent since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Insurgency-related violence has claimed nearly 6,200 lives, according to a tally of figures from Afghan and Western officials.