 » Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's embattled president, finally left the country for Saudi Arabia after being wounded during an attack on his compound on June 3rd. He may not return. Meanwhile, fighting and strife persisted in many parts of the country. See article » Protests against Syria's government spread and intensified. The regime said that "armed gangs" in the town of Jisr al-Shughour had killed 120 members of the security forces, but the claims were impossible to verify. At least 70 protesters in the city of Hama were reported to have been killed. See article » Tunisia's interim government cited technical reasons for postponing the country's first election since the removal in January of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, its longtime dictator. Calling for an end to a wave of strikes, the interim prime minister promised that elections, originally scheduled for next month, would be held on October 23rd. » Hundreds of Palestinians living in Syria tried to breach the Israeli border on the Golan Heights. At least eight were killed. See article » The outgoing speaker of Nigeria's parliament, Dimeji Bankole, pleaded not guilty to 16 counts of corruption after he allegedly secured $65m in loans using public assets.
A tough road ahead » Portugal's general election was won by the centre-right Social Democrats. Pedro Passos Coelho, the party's leader, will become prime minister later this month. His most pressing task will be to begin implementing a €78 billion ($115 billion) bail-out agreed on by the previous, Socialist-led administration with the European Union and the IMF. See article  » Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French former head of the IMF, appeared in court in New York to plead not guilty to the sexual assault and attempted rape of a hotel chambermaid. A trial is not expected to begin for several months. See article » Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the authoritarian president of Belarus, secured agreement for a $3 billion loan from a Russian-controlled regional bail-out fund. A sharp devaluation of the Belarusian rouble in May and a large current-account deficit have left the economy tottering. Mr Lukashenka is also seeking help from the IMF. » Confusion reigned over the outbreak of a strain of E. coli in Germany that has killed 26 people and infected thousands more. The authorities said an organic bean-sprout farm near Hamburg may have been responsible, but tests seemed to suggest otherwise. Farmers from Spain, which Germany had earlier incorrectly identified as the source of the outbreak, demanded compensation over lost vegetable sales.
Double trouble » Japan's nuclear agency announced that the reactors at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima plant released twice as much radiation as had been estimated (amounting to a fifth of Chernobyl's leaked radiation). The government apologised to the world for raising concerns about the safety of nuclear power.  » An American drone attack in Pakistan may have killed Ilyas Kashmiri, an al-Qaeda commander and potential successor to Osama bin Laden. But Pakistani and American officials were unable to agree on whether he really had been killed. See article » India's most popular television yogi, Baba Ramdev, began a fast in Delhi against corruption and led 50,000 followers in a demonstration. A day later baton-wielding police broke up the protesters' camp, injuring dozens of activists. The Hindu-nationalist opposition party adopted Mr Ramdev's cause and other anti-corruption campaigners joined him in fasting. See article » Australia imposed a ban on the export of live cattle to Indonesia after a public outcry over the maltreatment of Australian cattle at Indonesian abattoirs. Indonesia is Australia's biggest market for live cattle exports.
Bowing out » Austan Goolsbee said he was stepping down as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to return to academic life. Mr Goolsbee has been advising Barack Obama since 2004. His decision to leave the White House came after the release of more economic data that underscore the listlessness of the recovery. See article » Mr Obama reached a new low point for his handling of the economy and the deficit in a Washington Post/ABC poll. The survey put Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential front-runner, running neck-and-neck with the president at the election. Tim Pawlenty, another Republican contender, unveiled his economic plan, which calls for much deeper spending cuts than the ones being discussed on Capitol Hill and $2 trillion in tax cuts, which many called unrealistic. » A grand jury charged John Edwards, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, with breaking campaign-finance laws by allegedly using donations to cover up an extramarital affair. » After a week of denials, Anthony Weiner, a combative Democratic congressman from New York, admitted that he had sent a photograph of himself in his underpants to a young woman online and had had lewd exchanges with at least six other women. Mr Weiner's ambition to become mayor of New York is probably over. See article
The hullabaloo over Humala  » Ollanta Humala, a former army officer of elastic left-of-centre views, was elected as Peru's next president. He defeated Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of a corrupt former president, by 51.5% to 48.5%. Lima's stockmarket swooned after the election result, but then recovered somewhat. See article » Antonio Palocci resigned as chief of staff to Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, as criticism continued of the lucrative consulting business he ran during his time as a federal congressman from 2006 to 2010. Mr Palocci was replaced by Gleisi Hoffmann, a little-known senator for the ruling Workers' Party. See article » A judge in Chile opened an investigation into the death of Pablo Neruda, a Nobel prize-winning poet and Communist, who passed away in hospital 12 days after a military coup in 1973 that toppled the Socialist government of Salvador Allende. The same judge is investigating the death of Mr Allende, although an eyewitness and the former president's family have long maintained that he committed suicide. | 
No comments:
Post a Comment