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Australia's Labor Party wins enough seats to govern alone

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CANBERRA, Australia -- Australia’s center-left Labor Party secured enough seats Tuesday to hold an outright majority in the House as vote counting from an election 10 days ago continued. That means new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his party will be able to govern alone — although it's possible they might still seek deals with other parties to strengthen their hand. The calculus remains different in the Senate, where the Labor Party will likely need help from other liberals to command a majority. With about 80% of the vote counted, the Australia n Broadcasting Corp. projected Labor will win at least 76 of the 150 House seats, the minimum required to form a majority government. Two seats remained too close to call. Labor will need to provide a Speaker, which will reduce their voting ranks by one, although the Speaker also gets the casting vote in the case of a tie. Albanese's party defeated the conservative coalition led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the May 21 el...
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AP PHOTOS: In Kabul, cemeteries a part of Afghan daily life

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KABUL, Afghanistan -- One of the graves had broken open in Kabul’s Nader Shah Hill Cemetery, exposing a near-complete skeleton at the bottom of the pit in the hard earth. The boys, who had been playing nearby, were not impressed. “There’s a lot of ruined graves, it’s not unusual,” one boy, around 10, said with a shrug as they looked down at the bones. The only reason the kids came over, interrupting their soccer game, was to see what an Associated Press photographer was taking pictures of. When asked if they were scared by it, the boy and his friends cracked up laughing. “Why should we be afraid? A skeleton isn’t alive,” he said. “We see these every day.” It was no more startling than the scorpion that another kid showed off crawling on his sleeve. There are cemeteries all over Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, many of them filled with the dead from the country’s decades of war. They are incorporated casually into Afghans’ lives. They provide open spaces where children play soccer or cric...
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