Afghan election result delayed as fraud dispute deepens

KABUL: Afghanistan’s presidential election result has been delayed for several days, officials said Tuesday, as a dispute over alleged fraud threatens to derail the country´s first democratic transfer of power.

The preliminary result of the June 14 run-off vote had been due on Wednesday but was postponed at short notice to allow ballots in 2,000 voting centres to be checked -- throwing the handover process into turmoil.

Abdullah Abdullah, previously seen as the front-runner, has said he would reject the result due to "blatant fraud", while his poll rival Ashraf Ghani said the election was clean and claimed victory by more than one million votes.

The United Nations and donor countries have been trying for months to prevent a contested election outcome, fearing political deadlock and ethnic violence as US-led troops withdraw from the country.

But with the two candidates at loggerheads, many fear the impasse could tip Afghanistan into a risky period of street protests and uncertainty.

About 6,000 voting centres were open across Afghanistan on June 14, when voters defied the threat of Taliban attacks to choose between former foreign minister Abdullah and Ghani, an ex-World Bank economist.

Any tension between rival supporters could ignite ethnic unrest since Ghani attracts much of his support from the Pashtun tribes of the south and east, while Abdullah´s loyalists are Tajiks and other northern Afghan groups.

Ghani´s campaign team criticised the delay in results, but said it welcomed any attempt to prevent fraud in the vote count.

"We believe the election commission should work in accordance to the election timeline and announce results on time," campaign spokeswoman Azita Rafat told AFP.

"If this delay is for the sake of transparency then we accept it, though it runs against the election law."

Abdullah´s team said its boycott of the vote count was still in place.

"The (election) commission has lost its legitimacy for us, and the recount of 2,000 polling centres will not change anything for us," said campaign spokesman Jawed Faisal. (AFP)

Protests in Kabul as Afghan election crisis deepens

KABUL: Supporters of Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah marched through Kabul on Saturday as fears grow of unrest erupting over alleged fraud in the election one week ago.

Abdullah has boycotted the vote count, pitching Afghanistan into a political crisis as NATO combat troops withdraw from a 13-year war against Taliban insurgents.

The former foreign minister accused his poll rival Ashraf Ghani, outgoing President Hamid Karzai and election authorities of all committing fraud to deny him victory.

The protests began peacefully as hundreds of activists shouted slogans and carried banners that read "Fraudsters should be put on trial" and "We will defend our vote to the last drop of our blood".

"The election authorities are not impartial," Asar Hakimi, one protest organiser, told.

"All the achievements of the past 12 years are at stake. We will continue protesting if the government and the election commission continue their hostility."He said the "anti-fraud" rallies were not organised by Abdullah´s campaign, but the crowds appeared to be made up of Abdullah supporters.

Many Kabul roads were blocked off due to the demonstrations, and security forces were out.

An early morning suicide attack in the city targeted Masoom Stanekzai, a senior official at the government body responsible for exploring peace talks with the Taliban.

Police said Stanekzai escaped the blast uninjured, but that one civilian was killed and three wounded.

IBM deepens move into computer defense

SAN FRANCISCO: IBM on Monday moved deeper into defending business computers with a new service aimed at thwarting hackers before they do damage.

"The need for security to become part of our strategy has been natural," IBM vice president of security strategy Marc van Zadelhoff told AFP.

The century-old business technology titan made a priority of defending computer networks about two years ago, unifying resources from more than a dozen security firms it acquired.

IBM's computer security unit has been "growing like gangbusters," according to van Zadelhoff.

According to industry tracker IDC, IBM significantly outpaced overall computer protection company market growth and last year was the third largest seller of cyber defense software.

IBM on Monday ramped up its offerings with a Threat Protection System and a Critical Data Protection Program.

Introduction of the new cyber security weapons came with the release of IBM-funded Ponemon Institute studies showing that the number of hacker attacks is climbing along with the cost.

The average cost of a hack to a business has risen 15 percent to $6.2 million including lost revenue and productivity, according to Ponemon findings released by IBM.

The Critical Data Protection program uses an array of techniques to safeguard the data equivalent of a company's "crown jewels," according to van Zadelhoff.

IBM has tapped into intelligence about threats and hacker tactics from computer networks it cares for around the world.

Defensive technics go beyond maintaining watch-lists for known malicious codes to identifying when applications in networks act unusually and then pouncing to see whether hacker mischief is the cause.

“Traditional methods of prevention have often failed, leaving many to believe detection is the only way forward," IBM security systems general manager Brendan Hannigan said in a release.

"You must be able to prevent exploitations of known and unknown vulnerabilities

Rival Ukraine rallies raise tensions as Crimea crisis deepens

KIEV: Thousands took to the streets for rival pro- and anti-Kremlin rallies across Ukraine on Sunday as the West and Moscow dug in their heels over a deepening crisis in Crimea.
The protests come after a new marathon round of phone calls by US President Barack Obama seeking to defuse the Cold War-style standoff in the ex-Soviet state.
Tensions in Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which has come under de facto control by Russian forces, have resulted in a new face-off between Russia and the West, with each side imposing sanctions or warning of further prohibitive measures to force the other to back down.
Foreign observers have failed to get into Crimea, a majority Russophone region of Ukraine, to get a first-hand look at the situation on the ground and were forced to turn back on Saturday after pro-Kremlin gunmen fired warning shots.
Ukrainian border guards said Saturday that about 60 Russian military lorries had entered the rugged peninsula of two million in the last 24 hours by land and sea, a sign that Moscow was far from pulling back.
They also said "Russian extremists" had attacked a Crimea radar post, in the latest move by pro-Russian forces who have surrounded Ukrainian military bases and taken at least one missile defence unit.
"Armed attackers in military uniform and civil clothes broke the door and entered the building. Radio technic units and telecommunication cables were dissembled and destroyed," the border guards said in a statement in English on their website.
Sunday marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko and patriotic rallies were planned in Kiev and -- in a show of defiance towards Russia -- in Crimea's key cities of Simferopol and Sevastopol.
The rallies are also significant ahead of controversial plans by Crimea's regional pro-Moscow government to hold a referendum on joining Russia on March 16, which could lead to a formal annexation of the territory.
In the eastern city of Donetsk, a former stronghold of Ukraine's ousted president Viktor Yanukovych and the site of regular protests in recent days, there were fears of clashes as pro-Kiev demonstrators planned to celebrate Shevchenko, while pro-Russian protesters were due to hold a counter-rally.
The 19th-century poet has been credited with creating the modern Ukrainian language and the idea of Ukraine as a nation, giving the new Wester-backed government in Kiev a powerful opportunity on Sunday to revive some nationalist fervour in the face of Russia's incursion.