“I learned a big civics lesson today.” — Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, who tweeted a picture of his filled-out ballot (for Mitt Romney, natch), only to learn that appeared to break the law in New York state.
— David Bauder — http://twitter.com/dbauder
___
EDITOR’S NOTE — Election Watch shows you Election Day 2012 through the eyes of Associated Press journalists. Follow them on Twitter where available with the handles listed after each item.
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Apple Inc sold 3 million of its new iPads in the first three days the tablet computers were available, driving optimism for a strong holiday quarter despite intensifying competition.
Sales of the 7.9-inch iPad mini and fourth-generation 9.7-inch version, both Wi-Fi only models, were double the first-weekend sales of the Wi-Fi iPad sold in March, Apple said on Monday.
Apple did not break out numbers for the crucial iPad mini, a smaller version of the original tablet designed to spearhead its foray into a segment now dominated by Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle Fire and Google Inc’s Nexus 7.
Analysts estimate that about 2.3 million of the new iPads sold over the weekend were the mini-tablets, surpassing expectations of 1 million to 1.5 million.
Wall Street, which was disappointed with Apple’s latest quarterly earnings, had been looking to the iPad mini to boost demand during the crucial year-end holiday shopping season as competition reaches a fever pitch. Microsoft Corp became the latest major entrant to the market last month with the Windows-driven Surface.
While lines for the new iPads appeared lighter than usual for a new Apple product when they began selling at stores on Friday, the company said demand was so strong that it “practically sold out of iPad minis.”
Apple had never before introduced two different iPad models in one quarter. Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt said that while the sales numbers looked good, the company would need to sell another 20 million iPads this quarter to meet his estimate.
“There’s still a lot of wood to chop in the quarter,” McCourt said.
The company said it had already shipped many of the new iPads ordered before the release date, but some would not be sent out until later this month.
“We set a new launch weekend record and practically sold out of iPad minis,” Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said in a statement. “We’re working hard to build more quickly to meet the incredible demand.”
HOLIDAY SALES CRUCIAL
Apple shares closed up 1.35 percent at $ 584.62 on Nasdaq on Monday, but that was still 17 percent below the record high set in September.
The strong sales numbers for the iPads came despite both the iPad mini and fourth generation iPad being priced much above competing tablets. The iPad mini’s $ 329 price had prompted some analysts to conclude that the higher price tag may hurt demand.
But Apple is still maintaining its industry leading margins with the smaller tablet, according to a teardown analysis of the tablet by research firm IHS iSuppli.
The Wi-Fi only iPad mini carries a bill of materials of $ 188.00, IHS iSuppli said, adding that the cost goes up to $ 198 when manufacturing expenses are added in.
“This differs markedly from Amazon’s 7-inch Kindle Fire HD and Google’s Nexus 7 tablets, both of which are essentially low-margin or no-margin giveaways at a $ 199.00 retail price,” Andrew Rassweiler, senior principal analyst, teardown services, for IHS, said.
But the California company’s dominance of the tablet market eroded in the third quarter as both consumer and commercial shipments declined, partly as people waited for the new iPad mini, while rival Samsung Electronics more than doubled its share, according to tablet shipment numbers from research firm IDC.
Apple’s share of the tablet market fell to 50.4 percent from 59.7 percent in the third quarter while Samsung was No.2 with 18.4 percent followed by Amazon with 9 percent. Samsung’s market share a year ago was 6.5 percent.
The 7.9-inch iPad mini marks Apple’s first foray into the smaller-tablet segment and is the company’s first major new device since the death of co-founder Steve Jobs last year.
Versions of iPads with both Wi-Fi and cellular connections will not ship in the United States for another few weeks. And both will be available in more countries later this year.
Apple heads into the current quarter after refreshing almost all of its product lines, from Macintosh computers to tablets.
“We believe the iPad mini has the opportunity to surpass the sales of the regular-sized iPads over the next several years,” said Topeka Capital analyst Brian White.
(Additional reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Lisa Von Ahn and Phil Berlowitz)
Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News
NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – CBS is making a $ 1 million dollar donation to Hurricane Sandy recovery as part of a wider effort that includes PSAs and matching employee contributions through the end of the year, TheWrap has learned.
CEO Les Moonves announced the company’s Red Cross donation in a letter to employees obtained by TheWrap, in which he thanks CBS staff working in hurricane-stricken parts of the Northeast and details its charitable plans.
Other networks are pitching in as well: ABC is devoting its programming day Monday to fundraising, and its corporate parent, Disney, has donated $ 2 million. Fox’s parent, News Corp., has donated $ 1 million. And NBC is holding a telethon tonight. All of the networks are also making viewers aware of the recovery efforts through means ranging from crawls to PSAs.
Moonves singled out employees from all corners of the company who worked through tough conditions to keep its television and radio stations going.
“I am announcing today that November, the month of Thanksgiving, will be dedicated at all our operations to supporting the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts of the American Red Cross, with whom CBS has a long partnership in times of crisis,” he wrote. “Our local TV and radio stations, and their online counterparts, will work both individually and together… to employ our unique resources to lend additional support to those relief efforts through telethons, phone banks and comprehensive PSA campaigns. Those efforts have already begun, and are expanding as you read this.”
CBS, he noted, is producing special PSAs featuring its stars. The first, with Gary Sinise, aired during “The Big Bang Theory” on Thursday. More will air during football over the weekend.
Additionally, “Entertainment Tonight” is enlisting stars to appear in PSAs that will run in syndication on affiliates of all networks airing the show. CBS will also dedicate billboards to the relief effort.
“There will not be one division of our company that does not contribute to this effort, each in its own way, and in ways to be determined by each,” Moonves wrote.
“As a cornerstone of this month-long drive, CBS Corporation will make a $ 1 million contribution to the American Red Cross,” he added. “In addition, we are also making a commitment to match your individual contributions to any Sandy-related relief efforts by making corresponding additional gifts to the American Red Cross. The match will apply to contributions that may have already been made as well as to new donations through the end of the year.”
TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News
(Reuters) – Orthopedic surgeons-in-training said they were tired less often after rules regulating how much they could work went into place, according to a U.S. survey.
But the results published in the Annals of Surgery found the trainee doctors didn’t actually get any more sleep under the limited work hours policy, and also said they felt less prepared as doctors and were less satisfied with their education.
In July 2003, the U.S. Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education implemented new policy limiting the on-duty hours of notoriously sleep-deprived residents to 80 per week, with a minimum of ten hours off between shifts. Those changes were further updated in 2011.
The main goal was to ease young doctors’ fatigue and fatigue-related medical errors.
The work limits seem to have been somewhat successful, but they also come at a cost, according to Debra Weinstein from Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who worked on the study.
“The extent to which we restrict residents’ time in the hospital does risk (affecting) their skill and sense of preparedness,” she said.
“Continuing to further limit duty hours may not be the best way to address the goals of patient safety, resident well-being and excellent medical education.”
Some past studies have suggested that work limits improve quality of life for residents, but have a negative impact on their education. One survey published last year found that the majority of surgery residents worked more hours than the current regulations allowed.
In the new study, researchers analyzed surveys completed by a total of 216 residents at the Harvard Orthopedic Combined Residency Program between 2003 and 2009.
Compared to pre-2003 residents, orthopedic trainees in 2009 reported working fewer hours per week, about 66 hours versus 75. But they didn’t get any more sleep. Throughout the study period, they reported sleeping for about five hours every night, on average.
Residents rated their own preparedness to make clinical decisions under stress and their ability to perform the range of skills expected of them slightly lower in later years, the researchers said.
After the work-hour policies went into place, residents did say they spent fewer days feeling very tired, and a smaller proportion of them said their fatigue had a negative impact on patient care and safety.
Forty-six percent of residents said their fatigue affected the quality of care they provided in 2003, compared to 26 percent on the 2004 through 2009 surveys.
“There’s a general assumption that reducing work hours will result in more sleep for tired residents, and clearly out findings challenge that,” Weinstein said.
However, it’s possible that having more time to decompress and relieve psychological stress may improve residents’ sense of well-being, even if they’re not getting more sleep, she added.
Weinstein and her colleagues noted that their study didn’t include objective measures of residents’ performance, so they couldn’t tell whether they actually did better or worse on exams, or made more or fewer errors. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/TcFx66
(Reporting by Elaine Lies)
Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
TOKYO (Reuters) – Asian shares fell on Monday, tracking a sell-off in global shares late last week, as investors continued to shed risk ahead of the closely fought U.S. presidential election and looked past a strong U.S. jobs data to fragile economic growth worldwide.
The MSCI index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.MIAPJ0000PUS> fell 0.3 percent after climbing to its highest since October 23 on Friday.
Australian shares <.AXJO> were down 0.4 percent and South Korean shares <.KS11> opened down 0.7 percent.
“There is an absence of upward momentum, but economic data such as U.S. jobs were better than forecast last week, so the main index is expected to remain boxed in range before the U.S. elections,” Cho Sung-joon, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities, said of Seoul shares.
Japan’s Nikkei average <.N225> opened down 0.6 percent after closing at a one-week high on Friday. <.T>
The political uncertainty in the world’s largest economy made investors wary of holdings risk assets, and their safe-haven bids buoyed the U.S. dollar to two-month highs against a basket of major currencies <.DXY> on Monday.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney were neck-and-neck in opinion polls in the final 48 hours before Tuesday’s vote.
Obama’s re-election is perceived as negative for equities, while markets see Romney as stock-friendly, analysts have said.
After the U.S. election, Congress must deal with a “fiscal cliff” – up to $ 600 billion in expiring tax cuts and spending reductions that are set to kick in next year – which threatens to hurt the U.S. economy.
“Investors hate uncertainty, so there will be a sigh of relief when the election is over. Provided there is a clear election result and no change in the divided Congress, then traders and investors will see it as ‘business as usual’,” said Craig James, chief economist at CommSec.
Other key events this week include the Chinese congress starting November8 that will usher in a generational leadership change and policy decisions by the Reserve Bank of Australia and the European Central Bank.
The dollar was also bolstered by a report showing U.S. employers added 171,000 people to their payrolls last month, far above forecasts, and 84,000 more jobs were created in August and September than previously estimated.
Demand for U.S. factory goods also rose in September by the most in over a year, but a gauge of business investment plans showed lacklustre momentum.
The dollar steadied at 80.50 yen, near a more-than-six-month high of 80.68 yen scaled on Friday.
Bullion was undermined by the strong dollar. Spot gold ticked up 0.3 percent to $ 1,680.54 an ounce on Monday after a 2 percent plunge to a two-month low of $ 1,673.94 on Friday.
“For now, the liquidation in gold is likely to leave investors licking gaping wounds rather than focus on the benefits of a gently growing economy especially as it is currently set back in the shadows of the fiscal cliff,” Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co said in a note to clients.
Hedge funds and other big speculators shed U.S. commodities by $ 8 billion last week, the biggest weekly drop in nearly six month, with gold seeing the largest outflow of net long money for a second week running.
U.S. crude futures eased 0.1 percent to $ 84.82 a barrel and Brent was down 0.2 percent to $ 105.48.
The euro edged up 0.1 percent to $ 1.2823. It hit a one-month low of $ 1.2816 early in Asia on Monday, undermined by not only the U.S. data but also Friday’s survey showing euro zone October manufacturing shrank for the 15th straight month as output and new orders fell.
Finance chiefs of leading economies gathering in Mexico urged the United States on Sunday to avert a series of spending cuts and tax hikes that could hurt global output, though some countries saw Europe’s debt crisis as the No. 1 danger.
China offered some comforting news on Saturday, with an official survey showing the country’s services sector rebounded in October from a two-year low in September on stronger activity in the construction and retail sectors.
(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee in Seoul and Ian Chua in Sydney; Editing by Michael Perry)
Business News Headlines – Yahoo! News
LONDON (AP) — A British lawmaker says he’s asked the country’s media ethics inquiry to consider newly disclosed text messages sent between Prime Minister David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks, the ex-chief executive of Rupert Murdoch‘s British newspaper division.
The Mail on Sunday newspaper on Sunday published two previously undisclosed messages exchanged between the pair, who are friends and neighbors.
Brooks is facing trial on conspiracy charges linked to Britain’s phone hacking scandal, which saw Murdoch close down The News of The World tabloid.
In one newly disclosed message, Cameron thanked Brooks in 2009 for allowing him to borrow a horse, joking it was “fast, unpredictable and hard to control but fun.”
Opposition lawmaker Chris Bryant has asked a judge-led inquiry scrutinizing ties between the press and the powerful to examine the messages.
Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News
SOFIA (Reuters) – Fed up with ineffective law enforcement, thousands of Bulgarians have flocked to a Facebook page showcasing images of police breaking rules or failing to do their duty.
The “Photograph a Policeman” group includes pictures of badly parked patrol cars, including one in a disabled spot and another on a pedestrian crossing, and a police motorcyclist pulling a “wheelie” – on the wrong side of the road.
In another image, a uniformed policeman holds an open bottle of beer while sitting at the wheel of a patrol car.
It highlights frustration among many Bulgarians with a justice system that is subject to special monitoring by the European Union and a country where corruption and organized crime remain major problems five years after joining the bloc.
Created only this week, the group already has nearly 6,500 followers, including several well-known local politicians, journalists and businessmen.
It started after Boyan Maximov, from the Black Sea city of Varna, took a picture of three policemen apparently asleep in a patrol car and posted it on social networks.
Police then questioned Maximov, who complained of harassment and fines for petty offences like taking the rubbish out without an ID card, which under Bulgarian law must be carried in public at all times.
Last week police spokeswoman Kalinka Pencheva called Maximov “a red neck idiot, who has nothing to do and is bored” on local channel bTV. Pencheva has since been sacked but the Facebook page – and the number of pictures – continues to grow.
The interior ministry said it was aware of the page and most of the pictures were old.
“The Interior Ministry’s inspectorate obtained information about the creation of this group and is checking the photos and the comments that have been published,” a spokeswoman said.
(Reporting by Angel Krasimirov, editing by Paul Casciato)
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Nurses at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at New York University’s Langone Medical Center have challenging jobs, even in the best of times. Their patients are babies, some weighing as little as 2 pounds, who require constant and careful care as they struggle to stay alive.
On Monday night, as superstorm Sandy bore down on Manhattan, the nurses’ jobs took on a whole new sense of urgency as failing power forced the hospital’s patients, including the NICU nurses’ tiny charges, to evacuate.
“20/20″ recently reunited seven of those nurses: Claudia Roman, Nicola Zanzotta-Tagle, Margot Condon, Sandra Kyong Bradbury, Beth Largey, Annie Irace and Menchu Sanchez. They described how they managed to do their jobs – and save the most vulnerable of lives – under near-impossible circumstances.
On Monday night, as Sandy’s wind and rain buffeted the hospital’s windows, the nurses were preparing for a shift change and the day nurses had begun to brief the night shift nurses. Suddenly, the hospital was plunged into darkness. The respirators and monitors keeping the infants alive all went silent.
For one brief moment, everyone froze. Then the alarms began to ring as backup batteries kicked in. But the coast wasn’t clear – the nurses were soon horrified to learn that the hospital’s generator had failed, and that the East River had risen to start flooding the hospital.
“Everybody ran to a patient to make sure that the babies were fine,” Nicola Zanzotto-Tagle recalled. “If you had your phone with a flashlight on the phone, you held it right over the baby.”
For now, the four most critical patients – infants that couldn’t breathe on their own – were being supplied oxygen by battery-powered respirators, but the clock was ticking. They had, at most, just four hours before the machines were at risk of failing.
Annie Irache tended to the most critical baby — he had had abdominal surgery just the day before – as an evacuation of 20 NICU babies began.
“[He] was on medications to keep up his blood pressure,” Irache said, “and he also had a cardiac defect, so he was our first baby to go.”
One by one, each tiny infant, swaddled in blankets and a heating pad, cradled by one nurse and surrounded by at least five others, was carried down nine flights of stairs. Security guards and secretaries pitched in, lighting the way with flashlights and cell phones.
The procession moved slowly. As nurses took their careful steps, they carefully squeezed bags of oxygen into the babies’ lungs.
“We literally synchronized our steps going down nine flights,” Zanzotto-Tagle said. “I would say ‘Step, step, step.”
With their adrenaline pumping, the nurses said, it was imperative that they stay focused.
“We’re not usually bagging a baby down a stairwell … n the dark,” said Claudia Roman. “I was most worried about, ‘Let me not trip on this staircase as I’m carrying someone’s precious child, because that would be unforgivable.”
When the medical staff and the 20 babies emerged, a line of ambulances was waiting. A video of Margot Condon cradling a tiny baby as she rode a gurney struck a chord worldwide. But Condon said she had a singular goal.
“I was making sure the tube was in place, that the baby was pink,” she said. “I was not taking my eyes off that baby or that tube.”
Like other nurses, she did not feel panic. Her precious patient helped keep her calm.
Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
2 November 2012 Last updated at 14:38 ET
Former tycoon Asil Nadir has been ordered to pay £5m compensation in two years or face six more years in prison.
The 71-year-old was jailed for 10 years in August for stealing £28.8m from his Polly Peck empire in the 1980s.
He claimed he had no assets after prosecutors demanded £60m in compensation to administrators.
But trial judge Mr Justice Holroyde said it was not true that Nadir had not received any significant income after fleeing to Cyprus in 1993.
He left the UK for northern Cyprus while awaiting trial but returned in 2010 saying he wanted to clear his name.
‘Systematically disbelieved’
Former Stock Exchange listed company Polly Peck International [PPI] collapsed in 1990 owing £550m and Nadir was declared bankrupt two years later.
PPI began as a small fashion company but expanded into the food, leisure and electronics industries under Nadir’s ownership, growing into a business empire with more than 200 subsidiaries worldwide.
Clive Coleman Legal correspondent, BBC News
Why is Asil Nadir being made to pay £5m in compensation when he was found guilty of stealing £29m?
In fact the prosecution had sought a compensation order in the sum of £60m covering the £29m that he had stolen, plus the interest that would have accrued since the thefts which took place between 1987-90.
The judge found that, in the absence of any help from Nadir about the true nature of his finances, he was having to do the best that he could on the evidence available, and was erring on the side of generosity in fixing upon £5m.
Nadir now has two years to pay the money. If he fails to do that, he will be brought before a magistrates’ court. It can normally only sentence a person to six months, so the judge Mr Justice Holroyde has enlarged its powers to enable it to sentence Nadir to anything up to an additional six years’ imprisonment.
By 1990 it was on the FTSE 100 index and was one of the stock exchange’s best performing companies but the share price collapsed after the Serious Fraud Office raided its offices.
BBC legal affairs correspondent Clive Coleman said Nadir’s case had been “systematically disbelieved by the judge”.
Nadir had argued in the 17 years he lived in Cyprus he had engaged in no commercial activity and filed a document saying he had no assets or means, living on the generosity of his mother and a girlfriend.
But the judge said: “It is not true that Mr Nadir received no significant income or owned no significant assets since 1993.”
Mr Justice Holroyde, sitting at the Old Bailey, also said he found Nadir’s sister to be “evasive and untruthful” in her evidence.
‘Side of caution’
It was argued on his behalf that Nadir had not taken part in business during his years in exile.
But the judge said he could not accept that “such a proud and talented man” would have lived off handouts from his mother and a girlfriend.
He added: “Why would he have impoverished and demeaned himself in such a way?”
Nadir had not helped in revealing his finances but the judge said he did not think he could make an order for the full amount.
He said: “Conscious that I am probably erring on the side of caution and being more generous to the defendant than he deserves, I believe he has the means to pay compensation of £5m.”
Nadir thanked the judge from the dock before being taken away to Belmarsh prison. He may be released after serving half of both sentences.
The judge also ruled that Turkish airline boss Hamit Cankut Bagana could apply for the return of the £250,000 security he paid to allow Nadir bail.
Clare Whitaker, of the Serious Fraud Office, said outside court it was pleased that the victims of the collapse of Polly Peck had been given the opportunity for compensation.
BBC News – Business
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — By switching from studying business management to training as a nurse, 19-year-old Anita Taraky has placed a bet on the future of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar — that once foreign troops are gone, private-sector jobs will be fewer but nursing will always be in demand.
Besides, if the Taliban militants recapture the southern Afghan city that was their movement’s birthplace and from which they were expelled by U.S.-led forces 11 years ago, nursing will likely be one of the few professions left open to women.
Taraky is one of thousands of Kandaharis who are weighing their options with the approaching departure of the U.S. and its coalition partners. But while she has opted to stay, businessman Esmatullah Khan is leaving.
Khan, 29, made his living in property dealing and supplying services to the Western contingents operating in the city. Property prices are down, and business with foreigners is already shrinking, so he is pulling out, as are many others, he said.
Many are driven by a certainty that the Taliban will return, and that there will be reprisals.
“From our baker to our electrician to our plumber, everyone was engaged with the foreign troops and so they are all targets for the Taliban. And unless the government is much stronger, when the foreign troops leave, that is the end,” Khan said.
The stakes are high. Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city, is the southern counterweight to Kabul, the capital. Keeping Kandahar under central government control is critical to preventing the country from breaking apart into warring fiefdoms as it did in the 1990s.
“Kandahar is the gate of Afghanistan,” said Asan Noorzai, director of the provincial council. “If Kandahar is secure, the whole country is secure. If it is insecure, the whole country will soon be fighting.”
Even though Kandahar city has traffic jams and street hawkers to give it an atmosphere of normality, there are dozens of shuttered stores on the main commercial street, it’s almost too easy to find a parking space these days, and shopkeepers are feeling the pinch.
Dost Mohammad Nikzad said his profits from selling sweets have dropped by a half or more in the past year, to about $ 30 a day, and he has had to cut back on luxuries.
He said that every month he would buy a new shalwar kameez, the tunic favored by Afghan men; now he buys one every other month.
“I only go out to eat at a restaurant once a week. Before I would have gone multiple times a week,” Nikzad said, as he stood behind his counter, waiting for customers to show.
The measurements of violence levels contradict each other. On the one hand, many Kandaharis say things are better this year. On the other hand, the types of violence have changed and, to some minds, gotten worse.
“Before, we were mostly worried about bomb blasts. Now … we are afraid of worse things like assassinations and suicide attacks,” said Gul Mohammad Stanakzai, 34, a bank cashier.
Prying open the Taliban grip on Kandahar and its surrounding province has cost the lives of more than 400 international troops since 2001, and many more Afghans, including hundreds of public officials who have been assassinated by the Taliban.
Kandahar province remains the most violent in the country, averaging more than five “security incidents” a day, according to independent monitors. In Kandahar city, suicide attacks have more than doubled so far this year compared with the same period of 2011, according to U.N. figures.
“They are not fighting in the open the way they were before. Instead they are planting bombs and trying to get at us through the police and the army,” said Qadim Patyal, the deputy provincial governor.
The Taliban have said in official statements that they are focusing more on infiltrating Afghan and international forces to attack them. In the Kandahar governor’s office, armed Afghan soldiers are barred from meetings with American officials lest they turn on them, Patyal said.
And many point out that the “better security” is only relative. By all measures — attacks, bombings and civilian casualties — Kandahar is a much more violent city now than in 2008, before U.S. President Barack Obama ordered a troop surge.
There are no statistics on how many people have left the city of 500,000, but people are fleeing the south more than any other part of the country, according to U.N. figures. About 32 percent of the approximately 397,000 people who were recorded as in-country refugees were fleeing violence in the south, according to U.N. figures from the end of May.
The provincial government, which is supposed to fill the void left by the departing international forces, has suffered heavily from assassinations. It suffered a double blow in July last year with the killing of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of President Hamid Karzai who was seen as the man who made things work in Kandahar, and Ghulam Haider Hamidi, the mayor of the city.
Now, Noorzai says, he can neither get the attention of ministers in Kabul nor trust city officials to do their jobs.
He remembers 2001, when he and others traveled to the capital flying the Afghan flag which had just been reinstated in place of that of the ousted Taliban. “People were throwing flowers and money on our car, they were so happy to have the Afghan flag flying again,” he said.
“When we got power, what did we give them in return? Poverty, corruption, abuse.”
Mohammad Omer, Kandahar’s current mayor, insists that if people are leaving the city, it is to return to villages they fled in previous years because now security has improved.
Zulmai Hafez disagrees. He has felt like a marked man since his father went to work for the government three years ago, and is too frightened to return to his home in the Panjwai district outside Kandahar city. He refused to have his picture taken or to have a reporter to his home, instead meeting at the city’s media center.
“It’s the Taliban who control the land, not the government,” Hafez said. He notes that the government administrator for his district sold off half his land, saying he would not be able to protect the entire farm from insurgents. Many believe the previous mayor was murdered because he went after powerful land barons.
Land reform is badly needed, and the mayor is angry about people who steal land, but he offers no solution. Kandahar only gets electricity about half the day. The mayor says it’s up to the Western allies to fix that. But the foreign aid is sharply down. Aid coming to Kandahar province through the U.S. Agency for International Development, the largest donor, has fallen to $ 63 million this year from $ 161 million in 2011, according to U.S. Embassy figures.
The mayor prefers to talk about investing in parks and planting trees. “I can’t resolve the electricity problem, but at least I can provide a place in the city for people to relax,” he said.
The only people thinking long-term appear to be the Taliban.
“The Americans are going and the Taliban need the people’s support, so they are trying to avoid attacks that result in civilian casualties,” said Noor Agha Mujahid, a member of the Taliban shadow government for Kandahar province, where he oversees operations in a rural district. “After 2014 … it will not take a month to take every place back.”
One of the biggest worries is the fate of women who have made strides in business and politics since the ouster of the Taliban.
“What will these women do?” asked Ehsanullah Ehsan, director of a center that trains more than 800 women a year in computers, English and business. It was at his center where Anita Taraky studied before switching to nursing.
“Even if the Taliban don’t come back, even if the international community just leaves, there will be fewer opportunities for women,” he said.
On the outskirts of the city stands one of the grandest projects of post-Taliban Kandahar — the gated community of Ayno Maina with tree-lined cement homes, wi-fi and rooftop satellite dishes.
Khan, the departing businessman, says he bought bought 10 lots for $ 66,000 in Ayno Maina and has yet to sell any of them despite slashing the price,
He recalled that when he first went to the project office it was packed with buyers. “Now it is full of empty houses. No one goes there,” Khan said.
Only about 15,000 of the 40,000 lots have been sold, and 2,400 homes built and occupied, according to Mahmood Karzai, one of the development’s main backers and a brother of President Karzai. He argues, however, that prices are down all over Afghanistan, and that Ayno Maina is still viable, provided his brother gets serious about reform that will attract investors.
“Afghanistan became a game,” he said over lunch at the Ayno Maina office. “The game is to make money and get the hell out of here. That goes for politicians. That goes for contractors.”
He shrugged off allegations that he skimmed money from Ayno Maina, saying the claims were started by competitors in Kabul who assume everyone who is building something in Afghanistan is also stealing money.
He said the money went where it was needed: to Western-style building standards and security.
In downtown Kandahar, a deserted park and Ferris wheel serve as another reminder of thwarted hopes. Built in the mid-2000s, the wheel has been idle for two years according to a guard, Abdullah Jan Samad. It isn’t broken, he said, it just needs electricity. A major U.S.-funded project to get reliable electricity to the city has floundered and generators that were supposed to provide a temporary solution only operate part-time because of fuel shortages.
“The government should be paying for maintenance for the Ferris wheel,” the guard said. “When you build something you should also make sure to maintain it.”
____
Associated Press Writer Mirwais Khan contributed to this report from Kandahar.
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