LEXINGTON – Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney offered a sweeping critique of President Barack Obama’s handling of threats in the Middle East in a foreign policy address in which he tried to present himself as a credible mainstream alternative.
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WASHINGTON – US telecommunications operators should not do business with China’s top network equipment makers because potential Chinese state influence on the companies poses a security threat, the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee said in a report.
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LUXEMBOURG – Euro zone finance ministers launched their permanent 500 billion euro ($650 billion) bailout fund but said Spain, the country widely expected to be first to draw on it, was taking steps to overhaul its economy and did not need a bailout for now.
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BIRMINGHAM, England – Britain’s Conservatives would slash government spending on welfare by 10 billion pounds ($16 billion) a year if re-elected, finance minister George Osborne said, though he offered few ideas on how to bring the economy out of recession.
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GUVECCI, Turkey – Turkish President Abdullah Gul said the “worst-case scenarios” were now playing out in Syria and Turkey would do everything necessary to protect itself, as its army fired back for a sixth day after a shell from Syria flew over the border.
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DUBAI – Iran derided Israel’s air defences as feeble, citing a drone incursion into its arch-foe’s airspace, but did not say it had sent the aircraft shot down by the Israelis at the weekend.
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JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s local government workers’ union said it would launch a strike over pay in the next few days, the first sign of a wave of labour unrest in Africa’s biggest economy spreading from the mines into the public sector.
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KHARTOUM – Insurgents shelled the main city of Sudan’s oil-producing South Kordofan state near the border with South Sudan, both sides said, their first assault on the government stronghold since last year.
