PRISTINA, Serbia – After a decade struggling to prove it deserves independence, Kosovo’s hardest task is still ahead: proving it can afford it.

ISLAMABAD – Pakistanis vote in an election on Monday that could bring about the downfall of President Pervez Musharraf if it returns a hostile parliament with a prime minister who wants to be his own man.

LAHORE – Security fears may have kept Pakistani politicians off the streets, but their faces can be seen every way one turns in the city of Lahore.

Here is a chronology of some of the main events in Lebanon since former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri was killed on February 14, 2005, along with 22 others.

BEIRUT – Three years after Rafik al-Hariri’s assassination, the crisis unleashed by his death opens ever deeper rifts in Lebanon and threatens the state and society the leader tried to rebuild after the civil war.

ASHGABAT – Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov pardoned more than a thousand prisoners on Thursday — the first anniversary of his rule in the gas-producing Caspian nation.

MOSCOW – The prosecutor of Russia’s Volga region of Saratov was killed overnight and police believe his murder could be linked to his anti-corruption drive, Russian media reported on Thursday.

TEHRAN (FNA) – An earthquake, measuring 4.3 on the Richter scale, jolted a remote mountainous area in Iran’s central province of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiyari overnight.

TEHRAN (FNA) – Iranian Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said the country’s long-awaited Oil Bourse will be inaugurated Sunday.

TEHRAN (FNA) – Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Mohammad Ali Hosseini expressed his country’s enthusiasm for having media cooperation with India.