 » Pakistan's difficult relationship with the United States became more complicated after the American mission that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. Pakistanis fumed about America's incursion into their territory and its insinuation that they knew where bin Laden had been hiding. Both countries were at odds over who would question his widows. The CIA's station chief in Pakistan had his identity blown, which some reckoned to be a retaliation. See article » Japan's prime minister, Naoto Kan, demanded a temporary shutdown of the power plant at Hamaoka, an ageing facility near a tectonic fault line. He also suggested that a pre-tsunami plan to increase the country's reliance on nuclear power should be scrapped and greater emphasis placed on renewable energy. Japan's nuclear industry was shocked.
See article » The date of Thailand's general election was set for July 3rd. A candidate for the party of Thaksin Shinawatra, an exiled icon of the red-shirt protest movement, was shot and wounded, boding ill for the campaign season ahead. » Singapore's ruling People's Action Party was re-elected with a majority of 81 to 6, which the opposition regarded as a breakthrough; the PAP won only 60% of the vote, much less than in 2006 and 2001. Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister and son of the city-state's first prime minister, broke with tradition and acknowledged mistakes, promising to do better in future. See article » Samoa said it wanted to move its clocks 24 hours forward, in effect changing the Pacific's already zigzagging international dateline. The switch would bring the island chain onto the same business day as Australia, New Zealand and its trading partners in Asia, reversing a decision it made 119 years ago to align its time with American trading hours. See article
King Rafael » Ecuador voted on a package of ten constitutional amendments, many of which would expand the power of Rafael Correa, the president. Although Mr Correa declared victory based on exit polling, the official count has been slow, and two key amendments are on a knife-edge. See article » A Guatemalan court acquitted Alfonso Portillo, a former president, of embezzlement charges. The UN-sponsored International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala denounced the decision. The United States and France have requested Mr Portillo's extradition.
A cold spring in Damascus  » Syrian government emissaries held tentative talks with some veteran dissidents, while the security forces killed scores of protesters and fired artillery at restive sections of Homs, Syria's third-most-populous city. In Aleppo, Syria's second city, security forces broke up the biggest protest so far. See article » Libyan rebels strengthened their grip on Misrata, the city closest to the capital, Tripoli, which is still in rebel hands. They were reported to have captured the airport and strengthened the naval lifeline between Misrata and Benghazi, the rebels' capital in the east. » Twenty years after taking power, Chad's Idriss Déby was re-elected for a fourth term as president, apparently with 89% of votes cast. » A report by American scientists estimated that, on average, 48 women and girls are raped every hour in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a much higher rate than that suggested by UN figures. » After worldwide protests, the Ugandan parliament suspended a bill that called for the death penalty for homosexuals.
To AV and to AV not  » Britain's Liberal Democrats, the junior party in the coalition government, suffered a double electoral whammy. In local elections they lost hundreds of council seats to the opposition Labour Party. And a referendum on switching to the alternative-vote system for parliamentary elections, supported by the Lib Dems but vociferously opposed by the Conservatives, the coalition's senior party, was defeated by 68% to 32%. Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems' leader, pledged to fight for "muscular liberalism"; the same day he lost a vote in the House of Lords to introduce elected police commissioners, a key Lib Dem policy. See article » The Scottish National Party, which advocates Scotland's secession from the United Kingdom, won a surprising majority of seats in elections to the Scottish Parliament. Alex Salmond, the party's leader, said a referendum on Scottish independence would be held in the second half of the parliamentary term. See article » Mario Draghi, head of Italy's central bank, came a step closer to succeeding Jean-Claude Trichet as president of the European Central Bank when Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, told a newspaper that she "could support" his candidacy. Mr Draghi has already secured the support of France. » Both the international envoy to Bosnia and the International Crisis Group, a think-tank, said Bosnia was facing its worst crisis since the end of the fighting in 1995. The immediate danger is a threat by the leader of Bosnia's Serbian part to hold a referendum on whether to accept the judicial authority of the federal state. Bosnia has been without a central government since elections seven months ago. » An earthquake of magnitude 5.1 shook Spain's southern Murcia region, killing at least ten people, the worst tremor in the country for 50 years.
It's a tough job… » There were some twitches of life in the Republican race for president. Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House who famously shut down the government in 1995, declared his candidacy. And Mitt Romney prepared to outline his plans for health care. The putative Republican front-runner is often credited with implementing an early version of Obamacare when he was governor of Massachusetts; he has been trying to distance himself from the policy ever since. See article  » Barack Obama went to El Paso to vaunt his administration's efforts on border security and to chastise Republicans for not doing more to reform immigration laws, an early play for the Hispanic vote ahead of next year's election. See article » The Mississippi River reached its highest level in some places for 70 years, causing severe flooding in Tennessee and elsewhere. The impoverished Mississippi Delta and Louisiana prepared for the worst. | 
No comments:
Post a Comment