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clear even to land on the ballot.
• Hooshang Amirahmadi, a bespectacled professor of public policy at Rutgers University, declared his candidacy for the Iranian presidency last year. He's now well into a quixotic quest that has taken him on fundraising jaunts from New York to California to Dubai and, finally, to Iran next month.
• Amirahmadi, 65, has lived in the United States for 40 years, calling it "my country." He married his wife here, and his daughter was raised in New Jersey. But he feels compelled to run for office in Iran to reconcile the conflict he and other Iranian-Americans feel within.
• "I feel like, you know, it's not easy to be an Iranian originally and be here, and be a citizen of this country, and see the two sides of you fight each other every day," Amirahmadi said.
• Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was elected to his second term in 2009 in an election that sparked pro-democracy protests. He is not eligible to run again.
• ___

• KABUL (AP) -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met again Tuesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a day after they put on a show of unity as they tried to end recent bickering over anti-American comments made by the Afghan leader.
• Kerry also met Tuesday at the American Embassy in Kabul with participants in a U.S.-backed women's entrepreneurship program. He heard a succession of concerns from businesswomen fearful of what the 2014 transition will mean for not only for women and girls but for Afghanistan's commerce in general.
• Many advocates for women's rights worry that the departure of international troops will lead to a deterioration in conditions for women, who were denied basic rights such as education under Taliban rule.
• "After the transition happens, we are hoping for the same attention" as we get now, said Hassina Syed, who runs catering, construction and transportation firms. With the transition approaching "there is a lot of negative effect on the business sector," she told Kerry.
• Kerry also spoke with civic leaders preparing for Afghanistan's 2014 elections, telling them he wanted to pay the "respects of everybody in America for the journey that you are on and for the great contribution you're making to your country and the efforts you're making to develop this democracy."

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