Iran presidential race down to choice of 2 conservatives
Regardless of whether nuclear strategist Saeed Jalili or Tehran Mayor Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf wins, Iran will remain in the grip of Islamist hard-liners.
By Ramin Mostaghim, Alexandra Sandels and Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times
TEHRAN — When Iranians go to the polls Friday, they will bid an unceremonious farewell to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the populist with the zip-up windbreaker who ran afoul of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, even as he becameIran's provocative face to the world. But the voters will be casting ballots with scarcely a hint of the reformist spirit that swept the country four years ago and ended in a bloody crackdown.
Considering the front-runners in Iran's presidential race, it seems likely that, no matter who wins, the nation will drift further into the grip of Islamist hard-liners and remain defiant in stoking regional hostilities and pursuing a nuclear program that has drawn stiff economic sanctions from the U.S. and Europe.
Nicaragua fast-tracks Chinese plan to build canal to rival Panama
Congressional committee gives go-ahead to project despite objections raised by opposition
A Nicaraguan congressional committee has approved giving a China-based consortium the concession to build and operate a canal between the Pacific and Caribbean, fast-tracking the huge development project despite objections from the opposition.
The infrastructure committee president, Jenny Martínez, said the bill had immediately been sent to the National Assembly, which is expected to approve it on Thursday. President Daniel Ortega's Sandinista Front controls the national legislature with 63 out of 92 politicians.
Opposition politicians voted against the proposal, saying the initiative was being rushed.
Dutch government to introduce tough legislation on forced marriage
Problem persists in ‘privacy of the family circle’
Peter Cluskey
The Dutch government is to introduce new legislation from July 1st which will give it some of the toughest laws in Europe against forced marriage, for which hundreds of young women from ethnic minority backgrounds are sent abroad by their families each year.
Forced marriage is already illegal in the Netherlands, but the department of justice says the problem continues to persist “in the privacy of the family circle”, and so new penalties are necessary to mark it “as a serious criminal offence which will not be tolerated in Dutch society”.
Every resident of the Netherlands, nationals and foreign nationals, must be registered in the local town hall, but as things stand, parents have the right to remove a child’s name from the register if that child has gone to live outside the country, and the reasons do not have to be specified.
SYRIA
Syrian regime poised to set sights on Aleppo
Syrian troops and opposition forces have stepped up fighting close to Syria's second city, Aleppo. The confrontation follows a significant strategic victory by government forces in the border town of Qusair.
Reports from Syrian state television and the British-based activist group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, indicated on Monday that fighting had erupted at a military airport about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from Aleppo.
"Opposition fighters have seized the radar tower in the Minnigh airbase," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman told the news agency AFP.
Egyptian warning over Ethiopia Nile dam
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has said "all options are open" to deal with any threat to his country's water supply posed by an Ethiopian dam.
Mr Morsi said he was not "calling for war", but that he would not allow Egypt's water supply to be endangered.
Egypt was apparently caught by surprise when Ethiopia started diverting the Blue Nile last month, amid works to construct a hydroelectric dam.
The river is a tributary of the Nile, on which Egypt is heavily dependent.
The Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a $4.7bn (£3.1bn) project that Ethiopia says will eventually provide 6,000 megawatts of power.
Super secret base fuels China's space ambitions
June 11, 2013 -- Updated 0420 GMT (1220 HKT)
Jiuquan, China (CNN) -- The first thing I noticed were the bicycles. Those who weren't riding them were walking.
I was beginning to wonder if we'd taken a wrong turn. We were looking for China's super-secret space center.
Our four-hour drive from Jiuquan in China's west had taken us past picture postcard fields and fish ponds framed by looming snow-capped peaks, through an oasis of green and finally across the arid Gobi desert.
We had pushed through numerous military checkpoints and past cameras that flashed and took our picture as we sped past the seemingly endless shimmering sand hills. There should be no doubt we'd arrived at the right place, it just didn't feel like it.
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