Saturday, 11 May 2013 20:04
Posted by Muhammad Iqbal
ROME: Italy's centre-left Democratic Party (PD), reeling from infighting that forced the resignation of Pier Luigi Bersani last month, chose former trade union boss Guglielmo Epifani as party secretary on Saturday.The party's two most prominent leaders, Prime Minister Enrico Letta and the young mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, both sat out the internal party contest, with the real battle to lead the centre-left likely to be delayed until after the summer.The PD's weakness has compounded problems confronting Letta as he tries to hold a fragile coalition together while facing deep recession, youth unemployment of almost 40 percent and public bitterness reflected in the success of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement.Epifani, a former head of Italy's biggest union the CGIL, was the sole candidate at a special assembly in Rome but he was widely seen as a compromise stand-in until a full party congress in October."The Democratic Party has been going through ...
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ROME: Italy's centre-left Democratic Party (PD), reeling from infighting that forced the resignation of Pier Luigi Bersani last month, chose former trade union boss Guglielmo Epifani as party secretary on Saturday.The party's two most prominent leaders, Prime Minister Enrico Letta and the young mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, both sat out the internal party contest, with the real battle to lead the centre-left likely to be delayed until after the summer.The PD's weakness has compounded problems confronting Letta as he tries to hold a fragile coalition together while facing deep recession, youth unemployment of almost 40 percent and public bitterness reflected in the success of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement.Epifani, a former head of Italy's biggest union the CGIL, was the sole candidate at a special assembly in Rome but he was widely seen as a compromise stand-in until a full party congress in October."The Democratic Party has been going through ...
SOFIA: Bulgarian state security officers seized 350,000 fake ballot papers, prosecutors said, just before a parliamentary election on Sunday that looks set to plunge the EU's poorest country into deeper political turmoil."Over 350,000 printed ballots, that were ready for use in the parliamentary elections, were found in stores of printing house in Kostinbrod," the prosecuting office of Bulgaria's capital, Sofia, said in a statement on Saturday.Copyright Reuters, 2013 ...
ISTANBUL: Russia has not yet agreed to extend the terms of its 2.5 billion euro ($3.2 billion) loan to Cyprus, Russia's deputy finance minister said on Saturday."There was a request to change the duration of the loan, we promised to think about it," Sergei Storchak told reporters, on the sidelines of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development annual meeting, speaking through an interpreter."This was a kind of promise if somebody wants to see it ...
LILLE: Three people who came into contact with France's only confirmed case of coronavirus have tested negative for the SARS-like disease, with results pending on two others, Health Minister Marisol Touraine said on Saturday.Lab results were expected later in the day on a friend or family member of the infected man, who remains in serious condition, and another patient who shared his hospital room, the minister and doctors told reporters in Lille, northern France.A doctor, ...
MOSCOW: The International Space Station crew on Friday were preparing for an emergency spacewalk to fix a "very serious' leak of ammonia from the orbiting laboratory's power system seeping into space.NASA emphasised that the lives of the multinational crew were not in danger but both Russian and US space experts were scrambling to swiftly fix the problem.ISS commander Chris Hadfield of Canada in a dramatic exchange with mission control said the crew were witnessing a ...
LONDON: Britain is temporarily pulling out some staff from its embassy in the Libyan capital Tripoli due to security concerns over recent political unrest, the Foreign Office said on Friday.Tensions have risen in Libya since ex-rebels besieged two ministries at the end of last month in a row over a law that would ban officials who served under slain dictator Moamer Qadhafi from holding office."Given the security implications of the ongoing political uncertainty, the British ...
BUDAPEST: Hungary's government announced new savings of up to 800 million euros on Friday in an effort to exit an EU excessive deficit procedure later this month. "The government will freeze 92.9 billion forints (310-million-euros, $403-million) of budget expenditures worth around 0.3 percent of gross domestic product, in order to exit the procedure," Economy Minister Mihaly Varga told journalists, without specifying what the measures entailed. A further 500 million euros of savings could be made ...
