Politics this week The Greek government said it would miss its budget-deficit targets for this year and next, blaming the country’s deepening recession. Euro-zone finance ministers turned the thumbscrews by saying they would not hand over the latest tranche of bail-out funding to Greece, worth €8 billion ($10.7 billion), until mid- November, a month later than planned. Greek unions held another general strike to protest against austerity measures. See article Moody’s downgraded Italy’s credit rating by three notches, citing concerns about its sluggish growth prospects and a loss of confidence across the euro zone. Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister, shrugged it off; so, more surprisingly, did the markets. In this section »Politics this week Business this week KAL's cartoon Reprints In an article for a Russian newspaper Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister and president-in-waiting, called for former Soviet states to join a “Eurasian Union” of economic integration. Denying that he wanted to rebuild the Soviet Union, he said that the move would have “an undoubtedly positive global effect”. Anti-Roma protests spread across Bulgaria after the killing of a young man by a car driven by an associate of a notorious Roma bigwig. Far-right parties hope to capitalise on the ugly mood at presidential and local elections later this month. See article A large hole in the ozone layer was reported to have opened over the Arctic this spring, the first time ozone loss in the northern hemisphere has matched that in the southern. Unusual weather was thought immediately to blame, though the underlying cause is probably chlorine-rich chemicals in the stratosphere. Power and the people The president of Myanmar decided to suspend all work on a $3.6 billion dam that Chinese firms have been building. His announcement came as a shock, not least to the China Power Investment Company, which suggested it might sue. The dam had been denounced by environmental groups and by the Kachin people who live near the site, on the Irrawaddy river. The greatest surprise was the president’s rationale for halting the project: Thein Sein acted, he said, “according to the desire of the people”. See article Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, signed a strategic pact with India. The agreement is the first of its kind for the Afghans—and caused immediate alarm in Pakistan, which is increasingly at odds with both America and the government in Kabul. Thailand suffered some of its worst flooding in recent memory. The deluge killed at least 220 people, inundating most of the country and pouring into some of the ancient temples at Ayutthaya. More than 150 people in Cambodia were also killed by the floods. A shortage of fresh water in the South Pacific saw the islands of Tuvalu and Tokelau in a state of emergency. Crops are withering, and on Tokelau people are subsisting on bottled water after six months of scant rainfall. Samoa has begun to ration water, too. See article Death comes from the sky Anwar al-Awlaki, an American of Yemeni descent, regarded by many as the most influential figure in al-Qaeda since the death of Osama bin Laden in May, was killed by an American drone in an ungoverned part of Yemen to the east of its capital, Sana’a. See article Russia and China vetoed a European-sponsored resolution in the UN Security Council condemning a crackdown on pro-democracy protesters by the Syrian government that has killed some 3,000 people. A suicide-bomb set off by a member of the Shabab, an Islamist group linked to al-Qaeda, killed at least 70 people near a government compound in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, from which the movement has recently been ejected. See article At least 19 people were killed in a reprisal attack on a village in Nigeria’s north- western state of Zamfara. The feud between villagers seemed to be over cattle and herding rights. Third time lucky Haiti got a new prime minister, at last. Having rejected the first two nominees proposed by Michel Martelly, who took office as president in May, the country’s Senate approved Garry Conille for the job. Aid donors had become increasingly alarmed by the lack of a government. Mr Conille has worked for Bill Clinton in his role as a UN envoy to Haiti. A centre in Vancouver where addicts can inject drugs safely but which the federal government wanted to close down was saved by Canada’s Supreme Court. The court ruled that the clinic, the only one of its kind in North America, posed no threat to public safety or health and that its closure would violate its users’ constitutional rights. A group calling itself “Zeta Killers” claimed responsibility for the recent murder of at least 35 people alleged to be members of the Zetas drug gang in Mexico, sparking fears of Colombian-style paramilitary vigilantes. But it was not immediately clear who the killers were linked to, or if they were from a rival drug mob. For Christie’s sake Chris Christie put an end to fever-pitch speculation that he would launch a bid for president, by ruling himself out of the running. The Republican governor of New Jersey had been pressed by party pooh-bahs over recent weeks to jump into the race, after a series of clangers by Rick Perry dented his front-runner status. After months of toying with the idea Sarah Palin also said she wouldn’t run; last year’s star of the conservative tea-party has had a lacklustre 2011. See article Meanwhile, Barack Obama said that he would be the “underdog” in next year’s presidential election, “given the economy”. A poll seemed to confirm that view, with 55% of Americans saying they expected the Republicans to win; only 37% thought Mr Obama would be re-elected. Mr Obama sent three long-stalled free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea to Congress for ratification. The pacts were negotiated under George Bush’s presidency, but had been held up amid a row about extending aid to American workers who lose their jobs to foreign competition. See article A new law came into effect in Alabama that cracks down on illegal immigration, after a judge ruled that it passed constitutional muster. Alabama’s measure, said to be the strictest in America, includes a requirement that schools ask about the legal status of children born to parents who come from abroad. Business this week Tributes poured in for Steve Jobs, who died at the age of 56. He had battled cancer and received a liver transplant in 2009. Mr Jobs was the driving force behind Apple and is widely credited with revolutionising the personal- technology industry. He once said that, “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me…Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful…that’s what matters to me.” See article Gulp In this section Politics this week »Business this week KAL's cartoon Reprints It was another tumultuous week for euro-zone banks, which are being battered by the region’s sovereign-debt crisis. Indices gauging the risk of bank defaults leapt amid concern that banks with the greatest exposure to government debt in the euro zone are struggling to obtain funding. Investors found little solace from Jean-Claude Trichet, the outgoing president of the European Central Bank, who insisted that it was the responsibility of politicians, and not the ECB, to restore “credible” confidence. The IMF once again urged euro-area governments to recapitalise banks. See article Deutsche Bank added to the general unease after it abandoned its pre-tax profit target for the year and forecast that its third quarter would be “significantly below expectations”. Germany’s biggest bank made further write-downs to its exposure to Greek debt, reflecting market value, which cost it €250m ($333m). Dexia, a big Franco-Belgian bank, was set to be broken up and its toxic assets hived off, as the Belgian and French governments rushed to assure Dexia’s depositors and creditors that their money would be safeguarded. Dexia was one of the first European banks to seek a bail-out in 2008, but it has struggled ever since. See article