An Cosantóir

10 | World Strategic Picture Europe The 76-yearold Argentinean cardinal, Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, was selected as the new pope and head of the Roman Catholic Church by the cardinals��� conclave in the Vatican. As a gesture of goodwill in ongoing peace talks with Turkey the illegal Kurdistan Workers��� Party released eight Turkish soldiers and officials it was holding hostage. Latvia made a formal application to become the 18th member of the Euro Zone. Asia Xi Jinping was officially appointed as China���s president by the National People���s Congress. Nearly 90 people were killed and more than 160 injured in a bombing in the city of Quetta, in western Pakistan. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni militant group, claimed responsibility. One of four leaders of Cambodia���s Khmer Rouge to have been charged with crimes against humanity, Ieng Sary, the regime���s foreign minister, died during his trial at the age of 87. In Karachi, Pakistan���s commercial capital, a bomb killed at least 45 people in a mainly Shia area. An armed conflict has broken out in the Malaysian province of Sabah. More than 200 Filipinos landed last month to enforce a claim on the province by the sultanate of Sulu in the southern Philippines, which ruled parts of Borneo for centuries. In response Malaysia launched Vaclav Klaus, the outgoing president of the Czech Republic, was charged with treason by the upper house of parliament because of his wide-ranging judicial amnesty at the start of the year, which stopped several high-profile corruption prosecutions. An Italian court sentenced the former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, to a year in jail for releasing details of a private telephone call recorded during investigations into a banking scandal. A 10,000-tonne meteor disintegrated in the skies above Chelyabinsk, a Russian city near the border with Kazakhstan, releasing 500 kilotonnes of energy (equivalent to the yield of a large nuclear bomb), blowing out windows and injuring more than 1,000 people. a raid on the group, but the clan members escaped. After North Korea conducted a third nuclear test, the US has proposed a resolution to expand UN sanctions on the rogue state. North Korea threatened to scrap the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 and launch a nuclear attack. Meanwhile, Park Geun-hye was sworn in as South Korea���s first female president. The NATO coalition in the Afghanistan admitted there had been no drop in the number of Taliban attacks in 2012. It said it had made an ���error��� in its previous statement that the number had fallen. The Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack in eastern Afghanistan that killed 11 police officers and six others. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN���s nuclear watchdog, reported that Iran had begun installing advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium at its nuclear plant at Natanz. An Cosant��ir April 2013 www.dfmagazine.ie Africa Sudan and South Sudan have agreed to restart the flow of oil after more than a year of disrupted supply following a disagreement between the two countries. South Sudan gets 98% of its revenue from oil. A French hostage held in Mali has been executed by ���al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb��� (AQIM), Mauritania���s ANI news agency has reported. The agency attributed the information to an AQIM spokesman. Six other French hostages are still being held. The Middle East One of the many rebel factions in Syria kidnapped 21 Filipino observers serving with UNDOF on the Golan Heights. The area is contested by Israel and Syria but has been comparatively stable since the 1970s. The observers were later released. According to Human Rights Watch a recent string of missile attacks carried out by the Syrian government killed 141 people, including 71 children, in Aleppo. Meanwhile, an international conference on Syria held in Rome was attended by new US Secretary of State John Kerry. The Americas After a long battle with cancer Venezuela���s outspoken leftist president for 14 years, Hugo Ch��vez, died. Nicol��s Maduro was sworn in as the interim president. A referendum was held on the Falkland Islands (known in Argentina as Las Islas Malvinas) on remaining under British rule. Of the 1,517 valid votes only three opted against the status quo. Argentina has dismissed the vote as irrelevant, since it considers the residents to be colonial settlers. Ra��l Castro began a new five-year term as Cuba���s president. He announced it would be his last and unveiled his chosen successor as Miguel D��az-Canel.

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