Crisis In The Middle East!!!!!

In case you haven't heard, there's some fighting going on in the Mideast. It hasn't gotten much press, so I thought I'd bring it to light here. Israel is pissed off at a bunch of people, who are also pissed off at Israel. Violence follows.

Can't Hardly Weah

Monrovia, Liberia-- The results in Liberia's first "genuine" Presidential election are trickling in and with only 278 out of 3,000 polling stations counted, ex-AC Milan footballer George Weah is winning with 23% of the vote. American educated economist Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is trailing with 14% of the vote thus far. With so many votes left to count a winner is far off, but the election is playing out as pundits predicted.

EDIT (7/20/06): Right, so Weah didn't win. Johnson-Sirleaf won and eventually Weah and his supporters gave up their protests, thus preventing the country from spiraling into more civil strife. The challenge remains for the new governemnt to rebuild Liberia and create a nation out of the rubble of years of violence.

More on that at the BBC.
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BBC for the full story and results thus far.

Viva Liberia

Monrovia, Liberia-- Civil War has marred Liberia since it's inception, but the cycle of violent conflict has stopped for now; It's election day in Liberia. In a country that has never known stability, let alone democracy, the process is not going as smoothly as had been hoped.


So far there have been no reports of violence or protests, however the country's poor infrastructure is showing through as the polls are moving painfully slowly, with voters often waiting upwards of two hours to vote. The BBC has reported that at some polling stations in the capital of Monrovia as few as 50 people are voting every 2 hours.

Obviously, there are no exit polls available so we will have to wait some time before the results of this historic election are made public.

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BBC's Liberian Election Coverage
(Photo by Jonathan Ernst for Reuters)