PARIS – France and Germany are to sound out conservative European leaders today about their plan to defuse the euro zone’s debt crisis, eager to rally support before a high-stakes EU summit.
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MOSCOW – Vladimir Putin filed candidacy papers for a March 4 presidential election yesterday while his opponents prepared for more protests over a parliamentary vote they say was rigged in favour of his ruling party.
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CAIRO – Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood won a majority of run-off contests in the first round of a parliamentary election, the electoral commission said yesterday, to consolidate its position as the clear front-runner.
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KABUL – Afghan President Hamid Karzai yesterday blamed a Pakistan-based group for bomb attacks in three Afghan cities that killed at least 59 people on Tuesday, an allegation that could stoke new tensions with Islamabad.
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BEIRUT – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has denied ordering his troops to kill peaceful demonstrators, telling the U.S. television channel ABC that only a “crazy” leader kills his own people.
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DURBAN – Negotiators are close to agreeing the shape of a Green Climate Fund, which is designed to help poor nations tackle global warming and nudge them towards a new global effort to fight climate change.
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WASHINGTON – The unmanned U.S. drone Iran said on Sunday it had captured was programmed to automatically return to base even if its data link was lost, one key reason that U.S. officials say the drone likely malfunctioned and was not downed by Iranian electronic warfare.
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BANGKOK – From a windowless room in a Bangkok suburb, computer technicians scour thousands of websites, Facebook pages and tweets night and day. Their mission: to suppress what is regarded as one of Thailand’s most heinous crimes — insulting the monarchy.
