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Five dead due to vehicle
explosion in Afghanistan
Electorial commission vehicle strikes land mine,
unclear whether attack was deliberate
BY STEPHEN GRAHAM
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
KABUL, Afghanistan — A doctor
helping organize Afghan elections
died Monday along with four other
civilians when an explosion tore
through their vehicle, police said. He
was the first election worker to die in
violence since the landmark vote.
Meanwhile, interim leader Hamid
Karzai consolidated his ballot lead,
commanding 61.3 percent with one
fifth of the votes counted from the Oct.
9 presidential ballot. Election officials
have said the tallies are unlikely to
change much once 20 percent of the
votes were counted.
Karzai’s closest challenger, former
Education Minister Yunus Qanooni,
charged Monday that only cheating
had given the U.S.-backed incum
bent the advantage. Qanooni was
trailing Karzai with only 18.8 per
cent of the vote.
The explosion destroyed a vehicle of
the joint U.N.-Afghan electoral com
mission in Paktika, a troubled province
on the Pakistani border, election
spokesman Sultan Baheen said.
Election officials said it was un
clear whether the vehicle was delib
erately targeted or had struck a mine
left over from Afghanistan’s many
years of war.
But the local police chief said the car
hit a land mine laid on a main road by
“the enemies of Afghanistan,” short
hand for Taliban militants, who
threatened to disrupt the elections.
The police official, Mohammed
EXPLOSION, page 6
Saudi Arabia learns from past
mistakes, invests funds wisely
Saudi government spending cautiously, building
foreign currency reserves in response to oil boom
BY DONNA ABU-NASR
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — During
the oil boom of the 1970s, Persian
Gulf countries spent lavishly to trans
form their desert backwaters into
shimmering modern cities, living
high with the help of a huge foreign
work force filling jobs citizens sud
denly could afford to avoid.
Today, oil prices are at 20-year highs,
but the world’s largest oil producer,
Saudi Arabia, is using part of the extra
billions pouring in to make the king
dom run without all the imported help.
The government wants to ease un
employment and the boredom that
some people say leads youths into Is
lamic extremism, but it will have to
change attitudes that evolved out of
the first spending spree.
“In our society, men want to sit in
comfortable, air-conditioned offices
and order people around,” said
Suhaib al-Hussaini, 23, a computer
engineering student. “They don’t
want to go to the field and work with
their own hands.”
Oil-producing countries, many of
which had drawn up this year’s
budgets based on expectations that
oil prices would dip to $19 a barrel,
are instead selling their oil for $55 a
barrel and surpluses are piling into
the billions.
During the 1970s and early ‘80s,
producers across the Middle East
spent their oil bonanza to make life
easier for their people.
In Saudi Arabia, the government
built roads, hospitals, schools and air
ports and provided free or heavily sub
sidized health care and education.
The spending spree began to wane
in the mid-1980s, when oil prices fell
and Arab birth rates soared.
With today’s windfall, governments
are spending much more cautiously,
building up their foreign currency re
serves and carefully weighing develop
ment projects for need. In several coun
tries, there are calls to spend the extra
cash on education, health and infra
structure or on civil servant pay raises.
Some people worry the money will
be squandered.
“Even if we had all the world’s oil
riches, we won’t see any of it because
of the extent of corruption in our coun
try,” said Aidarous Nasr, an opposition
lawmaker in Yemen, one of the re
gion’s poorest nations and a producer
of about 400,000 barrels of oil a day.
For Saudi Arabia, which pumps
9.5 million barrels a day, foreign cur
rency holdings grew by $17 billion
from January through the end of Au
gust. And that was before oil prices
surged above $50 a barrel.
Still, the government’s only appar
ent extra spending has been a two
month bonus for security forces,
which are involved in a major crack
down on Islamic militants, and a boost
in funds for vocational training centers.
Crown Prince Abdullah has said
most of the surplus will go to paying off
the government’s debt, which totals
$176 billion. But he also pledged to
spend billions on infrastructure, educa
tion, housing and health projects, as
well as on loans to low-income Saudis
to boost their employment prospects.
“It’s pretty clear they’re not going on
a spending binge,” said Brad Bour
land, chief economist at the Saudi
American Bank. “The character of
OIL, page 6
Britain's education reforms:
Fewer tests, more opportunity
Proposed overhaul of education system could be
implemented gradually over 10 years if approved
BY MICHAEL MCDONOUGH
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON — The biggest proposed
overhaul of Britain’s education system
in 60 years was unveiled Monday, in
cluding a plan to replace the wave of
standardized tests for high-school stu
dents with a single diploma system.
The goals include improving basic
skills such as reading, writing and
mathematics and giving students
more opportunity to follow vocation
al training.
Currently, British students aged 14
19 take a large number of standard
ized tests known as GCSEs and A-Iev
els, which are crucial to the
allocation of college and university
placement. Students usually only
study three to five subjects, specializ
ing far earlier than their European
and American counterparts, whose
diplomas often cover a much wider
range of disciplines at less depth.
For example, British students in
the arts often stop studying math at
age 16, while those preparing for A
levels in science often drop English,
languages or humanities.
The average British student now
takes as many as 40 all-purpose, super
vised exams between ages 16 and 18.
British schools also offer few alter
natives to pupils wishing to study
more practical disciplines that lead to
a specific vocational jobs.
The existing education system is
often blamed for the fact that Britain
has one of the highest dropout rates
for post-16 education in the industri
alized world.
Under the plan unveiled Monday by
former chief inspector of schools Mike
Tomlinson, the system of standardized
tests would be replaced with a new
four-tier diploma. It would include
fewer but harder exams, and pupils
would take them wheri thev were
✓
ready, not necessarily when they
reached the specified age.
After taking a common core of Eng
lish and math subjects, students would
decide at age 14 whether to pursue a
vocational or academic curriculum, or
to combine elements of both.
A “teacher-led” assessment would
replace some standardized tests as
the main way of evaluating the abili
ties of students.
Overall goals include reducing the
amount of time students spend
preparing for standardized tests,
rather than engaging in genuine
learning, reducing the number of
teenage dropouts and providing a
bigger academic challenge for the
brightest students.
“The status quo is simply not an
option,” Tomlinson said. “Change is
not readily embraced, but we are
convinced it is needed if we are to en
able all our young people to achieve
as highly as possible.”
He said the reforms could be intro
duced gradually over 10 years, if the
EDUCATION,page6