 » After months of acrimonious budget negotiations, Congress passed legislation to increase the limit on America's debt ceiling, which Barack Obama signed just hours ahead of a Treasury-imposed deadline after which, the Treasury said, America would be at risk of a default. The deal envisages $2.1 trillion in spending cuts, but no tax increases. The Republicans claimed victory.
See article » Before that deal, Mr Obama announced a compromise agreement that raises fuel-efficiency standards, requiring the average car sold in America to get 54.5 miles per gallon of fuel (65.4 miles per imperial gallon) by 2025. » Turkey's military leadership resigned en masse, in protest against the government's decision to block promotions for officers accused of plotting a coup. What would have been a crisis at other points in Turkey's history quickly blew over; the government moved to appoint replacements and protests were muted. See article » With Spain said to be increasingly at risk of a bail-out, the Socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, announced that a general election would be held on November 20th, four months ahead of schedule. Polls suggest that the opposition conservative People's Party will win. See article » The crisis in the euro area forced Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, to make an emergency address to parliament. His speech, which included claims that markets were "incorrectly" judging Italian debt, looked unlikely to calm investor fears about Italy's whopping debt pile. See article » Hungary's ruling Fidesz party said it wanted to introduce legislation that would allow it to charge three former Socialist prime ministers with mismanaging the public finances. The move adds to concerns about what some see as the government's authoritarian tilt. » Britain's nuclear authority decided to shut down the Mox facility at Sellafield, which produces mixed oxide fuel, because of the damage caused by the Fukushima disaster to Japan's nuclear industry, the Mox plant's biggest customer.
Standing to account  » The trial of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's former president, began in Cairo. Charged with corruption and ordering the killing of protesters, he was carried into court at a police academy on a stretcher—and pleaded not guilty. Mr Mubarak's sons, Alaa and Gamal, a former interior minister and six officials of the former regime are all on trial at the same time. »Tens of thousands of Islamists, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists inspired by the puritanical zealotry of early Islam, filled Cairo's Tahrir Square to call for a state governed by religious law. See article » Government forces in Syria were reported to have killed at least 100 people since July 31st, mostly in the town of Hama, the country's fourth-biggest, where protesters have been demonstrating for the past month. See article » General Abdel Fatah Younis, a former interior minister in Colonel Muammar Qaddafi's regime who had defected and was commanding Libya's rebel forces, was assassinated in murky circumstances near Benghazi, the rebel headquarters. See article » Famine worsened in the Horn of Africa, especially in Somalia. The UN estimates that more than 12m people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia need urgent help; tens of thousands have already died and hundreds of thousands more risk starvation. » South Africa's government agreed to lend 2.4 billion rand ($360m) to Swaziland, its tiny neighbour, after international donors refused to help the country's absolute monarch, who is facing a political crisis.
Hard graft » B.S. Yeddyurappa, the chief minister of Karnataka in south India, resigned amid a mining scandal that has robbed the state of $3.6 billion. He faces a criminal probe. Free of him, the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party is now in a better position to harangue the national government, led by Congress, over other cases of corruption. See article  » In Pakistan the second CIA station chief in seven months was forced to leave the country, reflecting still strained relations with Islamabad. » Street-fighting in Karachi killed at least 60 people over five days. Three hundred people were killed during July, as Pakistan's largest city exploded along the ethnic lines of its Sindhi, Muhajir and Pushtun populations, egged on by the main political parties. » Violence in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang spread to the city of Kashgar, where more than 20 people were killed in a series of attacks. One restaurant was mobbed by men wielding knives and another was set on fire. Officials blamed Muslim separatists. » Sir Michael Somare, leader of Papua New Guinea for half of its independent history, was officially removed from office, four months after being laid up by heart surgery. Over on the western half of the island the Indonesian territory of Papua saw thousands of people marching for the right to hold a referendum on independence.
Brazil first! » Brazil's government unveiled a new industrial policy, aimed at helping manufacturers cope with the strength of the real and Chinese imports. It features tax breaks, preferences for Brazilian firms in government procurement and a quadrupling of the number of inspectors to monitor imports. See article » Police in Mexico captured José Antonio Acosta (aka "El Diego"), the alleged leader of a drug gang in Ciudad Juárez, whom they say has confessed to ordering the murder of some 1,500 people.  » A court in Guatemala sentenced four former soldiers to more than 6,000 years each in prison for their role in a massacre in 1982 during the country's civil war, in which up to 200,000 people died. » Mauricio Macri, a conservative, was re-elected as mayor of Buenos Aires, winning 64% of the vote to 36% for his opponent, a supporter of Argentina's president, Cristina Fernández. Mr Macri's victory followed a similar defeat for the president's candidate in Sante Fé province, arousing hopes among the opposition that Ms Fernández may find it harder than it seemed to win a second term in October's presidential election. | 
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