Elections to watch on Sunday. (During times out and at halftime, of course.)

Afghanistan Readies for Next Step Along Path to Democracy

The people of Afghanistan go to the polls this weekend to cement a transition towards full democracy that began when U.S.-led forces set out to topple the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime almost four years ago.

Around 12 million Afghans are registered to vote for representatives for the national parliament and provincial assemblies. They will choose from some 5,800 hopefuls - including nearly 600 female candidates in a country notorious in the past for repressing and marginalizing women.

More than one quarter of the 249 seats up for grabs in the lower house of parliament (the People's Council or Wolesi Jirga) are earmarked for women.

With a majority of Afghans illiterate, ballot slips will bear the photograph, name and a unique symbol chosen by each candidate - anything from a pair of scissors to two mobile phones to a bunch of grapes - to make identifying choices easier.

Sunday's poll follows a presidential election last October, won by the former interim leader, Hamid Karzai. That was Afghanistan's first election in 40 years; this is its second.


Will Germany's Turks Pick the Next Chancellor?

More than a half-million German-Turkish voters are eligible to go to the polls in federal elections this weekend. They overwhelmingly support the Social Democrats, and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has put Turkish voters at the front of his campaign this week.

This week, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder paid a visit to the editorial offices and printing plant of the Dogan Media Group, the German arm of Turkey's largest media conglomerate. That might not sound like an obvious place to give a stump speech, but in his efforts to court the country's more than half-million Turkish-German voters, Schröder's pitstop in Mörfelden-Walldorf near Frankfurt on Tuesday was essential.


Final push from German contenders

Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), lead Schroeder's Social Democratic Party (SPD) in opinion polls.

Those numbers put Merkel on course to become Germany's first woman chancellor and the first to have grown up in the former communist east.

But an estimated 15-25 percent of voters are still undecided, and it was unclear if Merkel would be able to create a center-right coalition with her preferred ally, the Free Democrats (FDP), or be forced to form a "grand coalition" with the SPD.