Local Elections

Indonesia landslide kills 8 BANDUNG, Indonesia - A landslide triggered by torrential rain killed at least eight people and left nine others missing on Indonesia's main island of Java, an official said Monday. Nine houses were buried when mud gushed down from surrounding hills just after dawn Monday in West Bandung district. The Disaster Mitigation Agency said rescuers dug up the bodies of a man and his 7-year-old son embracing hours before darkness halted the search. - AP Britain reduces immigrant aid British Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans to curb access to welfare, housing, and free health care for non-Britons, as political parties jostle to persuade voters they understand concerns over mass immigration.

On Tuesday, a very small percentage of New Jersey's voters will go to the polls to select people who will make decisions that affect our children and our wallets. Local elections around the state, whether for school board members or municipal councils, rarely garner much voter interest. That needs to change. On Tuesday, the state's school districts will hold elections for budgets and board members. In 2005, only about 13 percent of the voters participated, according to Frank Belluscio of the New Jersey School Boards Association.

Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza Strip voted yesterday in closely watched local elections that indicated the ruling Fatah party was holding off the rising faction Hamas. Voters turned out in 84 municipalities to choose among 2,500 candidates running for 906 local government seats. In the last round of local elections late last year, Hamas, an electoral newcomer, swept to power in a majority of municipalities, knocking veteran Fatah activists back on their heels. A face-off between the two strongest Palestinian factions is expected again in the national election this summer, when voters will elect the 88-seat Palestinian Legislative Council.

Founded as a radical resistance movement in the 1980s, the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas is turning itself into an efficient vote-getting political machine. In the first local elections in the Gaza Strip, Hamas-affiliated candidates swept seven of 10 municipalities last week, taking 77 of 118 local-council seats. Beit Hanoun, where Hamas surprised even itself by taking 11 of 13 seats, "was our sweetest victory," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zukri, citing the northern Gaza Strip town from which rockets have been launched at Israel and that has suffered, in turn, from retaliatory raids that have leveled hundreds of acres of farmland.

A Democrat has won the U.S. Senate seat in Oregon, vacated by disgraced Republican Bob Packwood, and spin doctors are busy suggesting what it means. Of more interest may be what Oregon voters are saying about the electoral machinery itself. This was the first-ever statewide election conducted completely by mail. The turnout was demonstrably higher than other elections, and the costs to state government significantly lower - about $1 million less. Fears of fraud and coercion appeared unfounded.

Pierre Beregovoy, named by French President Francois Mitterrand to replace Edith Cresson as France's premier, declared yesterday that the battle against unemployment would be the top priority for his new administration. His other major goal will be to restore the flagging fortunes of the ruling Socialist Party, to which the president, the former premier and the new one all belong. It was the humiliating performance of the Socialists in recent regional and local elections that compelled Mitterrand to seek the resignation of Cresson, the country's first female premier, after she spent less than 11 months in office.

City business groups have begun to target Councilman David Cohen to be dumped from office in the 1987 municipal election because of what they consider his "anti-business" record in Council. "There's talk in the business community about what we are going to do in '87," said Ralph Widner, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia First Corp., during an interview last week. "Some of these people (Council members) have got to go. " And Widner makes no secret that Cohen is the councilman corporate leaders love to hate, although he refused to name other targets on Council.

Two months into their campaigns for Bensalem Council, Joyce E. Wawro and Donna M. Pasqualone were still virtual unknowns. "I think there was a mention buried in the back pages of the Bensalem Bulletin, but that was it," said Wawro, 45, a chemist for Smith Kline & French Laboratories. "People didn't know that we were the endorsed candidates. " Soon they would be front-page news. The women began working with political consultants, who decided that what their clients needed was "more press.

In one of the most crucial electoral exercises in recent years, millions of Filipino voters decide today whether to ratify a new constitution that is widely regarded as the foundation of a stable and democratic government here. After seven days of violence and political turmoil, voters lined up at the polls early today in this tense city, many of them describing the vote as an echo of last year's historical election pitting former President Ferdinand E. Marcos against Corazon C. Aquino.

Two Democrats broke ranks with party leaders last week by announcing they would run for freeholder seats in the June primary against party-backed candidates in what promises to be a bitter election. Dalyn Currey, mayor of East Greenwich and director of Gloucester County's Workforce Investment Board, and Willie Carter, a Vineland school psychologist, made their announcements Friday on the front steps of the county courthouse in Woodbury. Carter, a six-year member of the Monroe Township school board, would be the first black person elected to the Board of Freeholders.