Egypt awaits presidential election results
Egyptians are awaiting the delayed results of the presidential run-off election held last weekend.
The BBC’s Jon Leyne in Cairo
The results are due in the coming hours, after the election commission heard appeals by the two candidates.
Mohammed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood and former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq have both claimed victory and vowed to form unity governments.
Thousands of their supporters spent the night in the centre of Cairo amid increasing political polarisation.
Correspondents say the atmosphere has been peaceful, but tense.
Many people are still apprehensive about the intentions of the ruling generals, who gave themselves sweeping new powers last week after the Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that the Islamist-dominated parliament should be dissolved.
When teenage pregnancy is a death sentence
Each year, more than 350,000 young women die after falling pregnant – one every two minutes. Now, a new international drive is under way to deliver contraception to poverty-stricken nations, and so slash mortality rates
Uganda Sunday 24 June 2012
Joventa Kyasiimire is defiant. As we stand with hundreds of young women queuing in Uganda’s midday sun outside Kanungu health centre, she is telling me how she fell pregnant unexpectedly in September 2010 aged 17, how her boyfriend fled a week after he found out she was expecting and how, just days later, she learnt she was HIV positive. Ostracised by many in her community, Kyasiimire left school to look after her son, Godias, now 11 months, giving up her dreams of becoming a teacher.
Bloody Saturday: more than 100 reportedly killed in Syria
June 24, 2012 – 7:49AM
More than 100 people were reported killed yesterday in violence across Syria, as Turkey downplayed the Syrian shooting down of a Turkish plane while President Bashar al-Assad formed a new cabinet with key posts unchanged.
Turkey acknowledged that one of its warplanes may have violated Syrian airspace after Damascus confirmed shooting down the F-4 Phantom on Friday, in comments seen as a bid to cool the latest spat between the former allies.
Election leaves Greece deeply split
Greece’s economic crisis and increasingly polarised public opinion fuelled much loose talk about the potential for civil war in the run-up to the repeat election of 17 June.
By Spyros Economides Hellenic Observatory, London School of Economics
This touched a raw nerve in Greece’s public consciousness, invoking memories of the civil war which engulfed the country for three years in the late 1940s.
The question remains: is there a deep left-right split, or are current divisions in Greek politics of a different nature?
That civil war, from 1946 to 1949, pitted Greek communists against the monarchist “National” forces: a classic civil conflict between left and right which scarred the Greek political landscape.
Paraguay’s Lugo denounces ouster as president, asks backers to keep peace, in Paraguay protest
By Associated Press, Updated: Sunday, June 24, 3:32 PM
ASUNCION, Paraguay – Fernando Lugo emerged early Sunday to denounce his ouster as Paraguay’s president as a “parliamentary coup” and a “foreordained sentence” that was not based on proper evidence.
Lugo said his truncated presidency was targeted because he tried to help the South American nation’s poor majority. Asked whether he had any hope of retaking office, Lugo exhorted his followers to remain peaceful but suggested that popular national and international clamor could lead Paraguayan lawmakers to reverse his impeachment.
“In politics, anything is possible,” Lugo said.
Modern city rises up out of Siberia’s oil-rich peat bogs
The ‘national district’ of Khanti-Mansiysk, located in remote western Siberia, illustrates an ambitious effort by the Kremlin to modernize Soviet-era outposts, often with local oil revenue.
By Fred Weir, Correspondent
The most surprising place you’ve never heard of is probably this small “national district” set in the wilds of western Siberia, where fast-paced changes may hint at the Kremlin’s modernization agenda for the whole country.
Khanti-Mansiysk has twice as much oil as Libya, and accounts for more than half of giant Russia’s entire production. It’s only “small” by Siberian standards; if it were in the US it would be the third largest state, after Texas. If it were an independent country, it would probably be the richest per capita on earth, since its entire population amounts to just 1.5 million people.