Delivering his acceptance speech at a November 3 press conference, the day after Afghanistan's Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) declared him the winner of the country's disputed election, President Hamid Karzai issued an appeal to “to bring peace to this soil” and said that Afghans should “ask our Taliban brothers and others to return and embrace their own land.”

In yet another sign of eroding international confidence in the U.S. dollar, India’s central bank has just purchased 200 tons of gold from the International Monetary Fund at $1,045.00 an ounce, in a transaction valued at close to $7 billion. Nor were Indian officials at all coy about their motives. As one senior official at the Indian central bank told the Wall Street Journal, “It makes sense to buy gold as it will appreciate more than the U.S. dollar.”

VOA News reported on November 2 that Afghanistan's Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) had declared President Hamid Karzai the winner of the country's disputed election, following the withdrawal from the race the previous day by Karzai's challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, the nation’s former Foreign Minister. The runoff election that had been scheduled for November 7 has been cancelled and Karzai will remain as president for a five-year term.