With the results coming in from today's Afghanistan's election, we look at how it's playing out in the region and beyond: from Kandahar is Sarah Chayes, who originally went to the country as a journalist eight years ago, but is now special advisor to the U.S. commander in Afghanistan; Fariba Nawa, an Afghan-American journalist who is writing a book about the drug trade in Afghanistan; and Charlie Sennott, executive editor of GlobalPost, who has covered the Taliban since the mid-90’s.

Three years ago, the Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccine Gardasil, which protects against human papillomaviruses (HPV).  The category includes around 100 sexually transmitted viruses that are the primary cause of cervical cancer. By the end of last year more than 23 million doses had been distributed – enough to vaccinate seven million girls.

A new government study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has raised some concerns about side effects associated with the drug. Merck, the drug's manufacturer, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintain Gardasil is safe and effective, and that adequate warnings are provided. To find out more, we speak with Diane Harper, a physician and one of the lead researchers for Merck's Gardasil clinical trials. She has been speaking out in favor of more warnings. We also speak with Sheila Rothman, a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. For one parent's point of view, we talk to Kenye Jones-Downing about whether she plans to give her daughter the vaccine.

Decide for yourself! Watch the ad below. Does it go too far? Or not far enough?

Almost 100 people were killed yesterday as coordinated bomb attacks swept Baghdad. The truck bombs and mortar fire flattened buildings, collapsed highways, and left city residents stunned at the sudden increase in violence. The attacks came just as Iraqis consider a vote on whether to accelerate U.S. troop withdrawal. Today we discuss how the situation in Iraq is evolving with New York Times Baghdad correspondent Sam Dagher and Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman. Noah Feldman served as an advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in 2003.

For more, read Sam Dagher's article, 2 Blasts Expose Security Flaws in Heart of Iraq, in the New York Times.

After long negotiations, the Swiss bank UBS announced yesterday that it had reached a deal with the Internal Revenue Service. Part of the deal requires the bank to give the I.R.S. the names attached to 4,500 previously secret accounts. Swiss banks have long been valued for their secrecy and discretion; the I.R.S. suspects the bank may be harboring billions of taxable U.S. dollars in accounts owned by Americans.

Now that UBS is bowing to pressure from the U.S., the burning question is: where-oh-where will the fabulously wealthy go to hide their money now? For that and more, we check in with Louise Story, the Wall Street and finance reporter for the New York Times. 

With so much talk about the ailing economy, it may not seem like the best time to start a new business,  but in our weekly work segment we look at some reasons why it might make sense to do it now. Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner, author of Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance In Your Twenties and Thirties, joins us with two entrepreneurs who are doing well in the recession: Marva Allen, co-owner of Hue-Man Bookstore in New York, and Jo-Ellen Stammen, who runs her own design business. ...(continue reading)

While Democrats debate whether health care reform should include a government-funded "public option" health insurer, most Republicans have been opposed to the Democrats' conception of reform from the get-go. Democrats are now pressuring Obama to abandon bi-partisanship all together and “go it alone.” But what would that mean for Republicans? Would they be “left out,” “left behind,” or, if reform were to fail, wind up as the "last party standing?"  We host a Republican strategy session with Fred Barnes, the executive editor of the Weekly Standard, and Reihan Salam, a fellow at the New America Foundation, and author of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.

It's no kind of overstatement to say that CBS News legend Don Hewitt invented television news. As a producer he helped shape the careers of such respected news luminaries as Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite at a time when broadcast television was just emerging from radio's shadow. He made news into hour-long, genre-spanning programs. Hewitt created 60 Minutes in 1968; the show was a huge success and helped turn correspondents like Morley Safer, Diane Sawyer, and Mike Wallace into household names. His death at 86 comes as another new medium, the internet, looms over the future of existing broadcast and print media. To talk about the life and legacy of Don Hewitt, we talk to New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and Hewitt's long time friend and former CBS producer Jeff Gralnick.

As voting gets underway in Afghanistan's second-ever presidential election, we talk Martin Patience, an Afghan correspondent for the BBC. Polling centers have opened across the country, but violence has already shuttered some voting spots. Martin is on the ground in Mazar-i-Sharif in Northern Afghanistan. The threat of violence is being taken extremely seriously; some 300,000 Afghan and foreign troops will be deployed to protect an estimated 17 million voters at 6,969 polling sites.

A report in the New York Times this morning reveals that the CIA hired contractors from increasingly infamous security firm Blackwater for duties far beyond protecting senior government officials. The Times found that the Central Intelligence Agency had hired and trained contractors from Blackwater USA to find and assassinate top al Qaeda operatives. The operation was apparently never revealed to lawmakers and never successfully captured or killed any terrorist suspects. We talk to Mark Mazzetti, the reporter who broke the story, about the multi-million dollar program.

For more, read Mark Mazzetti's article, C.I.A. Sought Blackwater’s Help in Plan to Kill Jihadists, in the New York Times.

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We've all had emails like that filling our inboxes, and we all know to ignore them. There's a new generation of internet scams, however, which are harder to spot. Ryan LaBarge was nearly taken by a new plague on the popular classifieds site craigslist, where scammers offer non-existent homes for sale and solicit deposits from unsuspecting buyers. Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica talks us through the new scam and how rip-offs have evolved as internet usage has become more and more widespread. Amir Orad, executive vice president of the anti-fraud firm Actimize and an expert on financial crime and online security, talks with us about methods to keep yourself safe online.

Afghan authorities have decided to keep the polls open for an extra hour to allow more people to vote during the nation's second presidential election since the fall of the Taliban. Militants have launched minor attacks across the country in an attempt to disrupt the election. For an update from the scene in Kandahar, we talk to Sarah Chayes, special advisor to Gen. Stanley McChrystal.  (McChrystal is currently running the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan.) We are also joined by long-time journalist Charlie Sennott who is the executive editor of GlobalPost. Charlie's extensive reporting on the Taliban has just been released in a special report: Life, Death, and the Taliban.

Libyan Abdel Baset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 for his part in the 1988 bombing of a New York-bound Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland.  A Scottish judge will release al-Megrahi from a Scottish prison today on compassionate grounds, due to his terminal prostate cancer.

We're joined by Susan Cohen, whose daughter Theodora died in the bombing. Cohen is co-author of Pan Am 103: The Bombing, the Betrayals, and a Bereaved Family's Search for Justice.

The BBC's Glen Campbell joins us from Scotland with local reaction to the impending release of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted and imprisoned for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. We also talk to New York Times reporter Alan Cowell about the American opposition to the release of the man many view as a fall guy for the attack.  The explosion killed 270 people, 189 of them Americans. Al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 of murder and other charges related to the bombing, but his lawyers have successfully lobbied for his release on compassionate grounds, as he is near death from prostate cancer.

For more, listen to our earlier interview with Susan Cohen, whose daughter Theodora died on the flight.