As U.S. Pulls Back, Fears Abound Over Toll on Afghan Economy

 KABUL, Afghanistan — While President Obama’s announcement of troop reductions is not expected to change much here right away, American and Afghan officials are already worrying about the impact of the eventual withdrawal of international forces on Afghanistan’s struggling economy. Very little will happen immediately. “What’s going to be different 24 hours after the president’s speech? Nothing,” said a senior American official in Kabul. Over the next three years, however, as the American military and civilian presence — and spending — decrease, thousands of jobs will end for Afghans who work at or around bases and under grants and contracts financed by the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development. Afghans and American civilian and...

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Designer Galliano Says He Can't Recall Speaking Slurs

 PARIS — In a halting voice, John Galliano, the fallen star designer of the fashion house of Dior, defended himself Wednesday against hate-crime charges by insisting he could not remember spewing anti-Semitic insults in a Parisian bar because of drug and alcohol addictions. Mr. Galliano, 50, appeared in court wearing a subdued charcoal jacket and open-necked shirt, speaking with the aid of a French interpreter who was replaced by Mr. Galliano’s lawyer when the translator had trouble understanding the English-speaking designer. “I have addictions, I am recovering from addictions and I am still in treatment,” Mr....

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President of Argentina to Seek Re-election

 BUENOS AIRES (AP) — President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina announced on Tuesday that she will seek re-election, ending months of speculation about her political plans. In a nationally televised address, Mrs. Kirchner said, ”I always knew what I had to do because I’ve always had a high sense of political responsibility and what must be done.” Polls indicate that Mrs. Kirchner, 58, who succeeded her husband, Néstor Kirchner, as president in 2007, lacks lacks majority support in Argentina but might easily win re-election in the Oct. 23 first-round vote because the opposition is divided. The president’s plans have been a subject of speculation because of rumored health issues and her public silence on her political future. Her husband died in October...

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Mexican Police Arrest Leader of Crime Gang

 MEXICO CITY — Six months after killing the leader of La Familia Michoacana, one of the country’s most ruthless criminal gangs, Mexican police officials said Tuesday that they had arrested his successor, hoping to deliver a blow to the group and bolster public support for the war on organized crime. The successor, José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, known as “el Chango,” slang for the Monkey, was captured by the federal police without a fight in the city of Aguascalientes, about 265 miles northwest of here, the police said. Mr. Méndez took control of the gang after the death in December of Nazario Moreno González, known as “the Craziest One,” the leader and a founder of the group. It is known both for spiritual dimensions that give it shades of a religious cult and...

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South Africa Embraces Mrs. Obama With Fervor

Michelle Obama helped garden as part of a community service project on Wednesday in Soweto township, Johannesburg, South Africa. By CELIA W. DUGGER SOWETO, South Africa — Graça Machel, the wife of South Africa’s first black president, Nelson Mandela, took the pulpit of the Regina Mundi church here on Wednesday to introduce Michelle Obama, the wife of America’s first black president.  “We welcome you as a daughter of African heritage, and we can call you the queen of our world,” said Ms. Machel, an advocate for women and children, noting that Regina Mundi means queen of the world in Latin. The prickly ambivalence that South...

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Free, but Unemployed, in Tunisia

 SIDI BOUZID, TUNISIA — Houcim Hani stood on Sunday in this central Tunisian city a few steps away from the spot where the 26-year-old street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire on the morning of Dec. 17 last year, and recalled the events that ushered in the revolt now known as the Arab Spring. He recalled, too, his own son’s attempt at self-immolation. “He lost the sight in one eye and is now waiting to have an operation,” said Mr. Hani, adding that the 18-year-old student’s suicide attempt was born from “dissatisfaction” about the future. “A lot of young people have tried to follow Bouazizi,” he said. Mr. Bouazizi, who died in early January, is now a martyr on the dusty streets of Sidi Bouzid, where walls have been painted with slogans...

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Obama Will Speed Pullout From War in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON — President Obama declared Wednesday that the United States had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, setting in motion a substantial withdrawal of American troops in an acknowledgment of the shifting threat in the region and the fast-changing political and economic landscape in a war-weary America. American and Afghan soldiers in Khost Province on Wednesday. President Obama has set an expedited withdrawal timetable. Asserting that the country that served as a base for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks no longer represented a terrorist threat to the United States, Mr. Obama declared that the “tide of war is receding.” And in...

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