News In Brief

Few Asians turn out to vote for new S. African chamber

After months of an opposition stay-away campaign, voting began Tuesday for 411,000 registered Asian voters to elect a 40-member house in South Africa's new three-chamber legislature.

In Durban, capital of the Natal Province, where the bulk of South Africa's 870,000 Asian population lives, candidates reported only a trickle of voters coming to the polls. The election marks the first time Asians, most of them descendants of Indian immigrants, have voted in national elections.