» A bomb attack on Syria's national security headquarters in Damascus killed—among others—Daoud Rajiha, the defence minister, Hassan Turkmani, a former defence minister, and Assef Shawkat, a key security man and brother-in-law of President Bashar Assad. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council pondered a new resolution, with Russia resistant to any proposal that would further undermine Mr Assad's regime.
See article»
» Israel's Kadima party pulled out of Binyamin Netanyahu's coalition government, after failing to agree on legislation that would draft most ultra-Orthodox men of military age into the army. See article»
» A bomber on a bus carrying Israeli tourists in the Bulgarian coastal resort of Burgas killed at least seven people. Mr Netanyahu blamed Iran for that and other recent attacks on Israeli tourists around the world and promised to hit back. See article»
» The National Forces Alliance, a broadly secular party led by a former prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, won 39 of the 80 seats reserved for parties in Libya's first election in four decades. An Islamist party close to the Muslim Brotherhood took 17. The remaining 120 seats in the 200-member assembly were reserved for individuals without formal party affiliations.
» The African Union elected Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, South Africa's home-affairs minister, to run its commission, making her the first woman to hold the post. She is a former wife of South Africa's president, Jacob Zuma. See article»
» A Tanzanian ferry carrying 290 passengers sank near the island of Zanzibar. Scores of people are dead or missing.
The government takes its slice
» The Greek government worked overtime to come up with savings of €11.5 billion ($14.1 billion) ahead of a visit by inspectors from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF, who will judge if Greece is keeping to the terms of its bail-out. Senior Greek officials have been locked in meetings searching for savings that will have the least impact on austerity-weary Greeks. See article»
» Germany's Constitutional Court delayed until September its ruling on whether the €500 billion European Stability Mechanism could be signed by the German president. The ESM was supposed to be up and running this month but has been held up by rows over ratification in several European countries.
» The European Union sharply criticised Romania's government for undermining the rule of law. In a scathing report on the political instability in Romania caused by the impeachment in parliament of President Traian Basescu by Victor Ponta's government, the EU's executive said it was particularly worried by the manipulation of the judiciary.
» Silvio Berlusconi raised the prospect of running for office again at elections next year. His move added a new element of uncertainty to Italy's volatile politics, one of the factors cited by Moody's when it downgraded the country's sovereign debt by two notches. See article»
Questions, questions
» Mitt Romney came under sustained assault from the Obama campaign for refusing to release more than two years of tax returns and also about the timing of his departure from Bain Capital (described as a "retroactive retirement" by one of Mr Romney's advisers). Mr Romney gave separate interviews to five television networks in an attempt to counter the attack. The polls remain neck and neck. See article»
» The latest attempt to pass the Law of the Sea treaty was scuttled by Republicans in the Senate. The treaty is based on a UN-brokered agreement in 1982 that attempts to shore-up international maritime law. Most countries have ratified it, though the application of the treaty remains vague. Republicans argue that it encroaches on American sovereignty.
The last defence
» An indigenous group in Colombia temporarily expelled 100 soldiers by force from an army base, which was being attacked by the FARC guerrillas. Its representatives said the locals were tired of the fighting and preferred to guard the area themselves.
» The European Union sent a delegation to Paraguay to investigate the rapid impeachment last month of its former president, Fernando Lugo. Mercosur, a South American trade block, has suspended Paraguay, but José Miguel Insulza, the secretary-general of the Organisation of American States, has said he opposes a suspension.
Tripping the light fantastic
» North Korea promoted Kim Jong Un to the position of marshal of the armed forces, prompting army celebrations in the streets of Pyongyang. Shortly before, a senior general, Ri Yong Ho, had been relieved of all his posts because of illness. The move caught North Korea watchers by surprise and came just days after a surreal concert took place in Pyongyang featuring Mickey Mouse and music from Frank Sinatra and "Rocky". See article»
» The Taliban said it was responsible for a bomb that destroyed 22 NATO fuel tankers in northern Afghanistan. The trucks, which were heading south from Uzbekistan, were attacked in the same province in which a prominent Afghan politician had been killed in a suicide-attack while attending his daughter's wedding a few days earlier.
» South-East Asian nations failed to reach an agreement at a meeting in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, on how to deal with China's claim to islands in the South China Sea. The ten-member ASEAN group ended its meeting without issuing a joint statement for the first time in its 45-year history. One diplomat accused China of buying the loyalty of Cambodia to prevent a joint communiqué critical of Chinese policy. See article» » Tens of thousands of people protested against nuclear power in Tokyo, in Japan's biggest demonstrations since the 1960s. Anger has increased partly as a result of the government's decision to restart two reactors closed after last year's Fukushima disaster, in order to avoid power shortages. See article»
No comments:
Post a Comment