{{Pope Francis has named a new secretary of state, in what is seen as his most significant appointment since he became leader of the Catholic Church in March.}}
Archbishop Pietro Parolin, a 58-year-old Vatican diplomat, replaced Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, 79, who is retiring.
Cardinal Bertone, appointed by Francis’ predecessor Pope Benedict, had been widely criticised over last year’s so-called “Vatileaks” scandals.
Leaked documents revealed corruption and infighting at the Vatican.
The secretary of state heads the Roman Curia, the central administration of the Catholic Church, and is the Pope’s chief adviser.
Archbishop Parolin, an Italian, is currently the Vatican’s nuncio – or ambassador – in Venezuela.
The BBC’s David Willey in Rome says his appointment marks the beginning of the replacement or dismissal of several former key members of Benedict’s administrative team.
Pope Francis has also promised to stamp out abuses at the Vatican bank – officially known as the Institute for Religious Works.
Shortly after his appointment, he set up a commission to investigate the bank and report back to him personally.
He later he issued a decree to combat money-laundering.
The Vatileaks scandals erupted in 2012, when former Pope Benedict’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, published confidential documents from Vatican offices alleging widespread corruption and mismanagement.
Gabriele was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in jail for stealing the papers, but he was subsequently pardoned by Benedict.
{BBC}
{{The first Japanese astronaut to live aboard the International Space Station is preparing for a return flight, this time to serve as commander, officials said on Wednesday.}}
Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, is due to leave in November with a pair of veteran astronauts from the United States and Russia.
Wakata, 50, is expected to take command of the orbital research outpost in March, marking the first time a Japanese astronaut will lead a human space mission.
“It means a lot to Japan to have its own representative to command the International Space Station,” Wakata told a news conference broadcast from the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“It’s a big milestone for Japan … to have this experience,” he said.
In 2009, Wakata became the first astronaut from Japan to live aboard the $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 250 miles above Earth.
Japan, one of 15 nations participating in the project, provided the station’s largest and most elaborate laboratory, named Kibo, as well as cargo resupply ships.
Wakata, who was part of two missions on NASA’s now-retired space shuttles, is training for his fourth flight along with NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, both 53.
Mastracchio, a veteran of three shuttle missions and one of NASA’s most experienced spacewalkers, will be making his first long-duration flight. Tyurin will be living aboard the station for a third time.
Command of the station typically rotates between a U.S. astronaut and Russian cosmonaut. In 2009, Belgium astronaut Frank De Winne became the first European to command the station. Canada’s first commander, Chris Hadfield, was in charge from March until May.
Wakata, a native of Saitama, Japan, holds a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering, a master’s in applied mechanics and a doctorate in aerospace engineering from Kyushu University. Before being selected as an astronaut in 1992, he worked as an aircraft structural engineer for Japan Airlines.
Wakata’s first two spaceflights, in January 1996 and October 2000, were aboard NASA space shuttles. He was Japan’s first live-aboard space station resident from March to July 2009. Upon returning to the station in November, Wakata will serve as a flight engineer before taking over command in March.
{{Switzerland’s economy will gain momentum in the coming months, buoyed in part by an improvement in business sentiment in surrounding euro zone countries, the leading Swiss indicator suggested on Friday.}}
The KOF barometer, a gauge of the economy’s performance in about six months’ time, rose to 1.36 points in August, its highest level since November 2012, from a revised 1.25 points in July, beating expectations for 1.33 in a Reuters poll.
“The year-on-year growth rate of Swiss Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the near future can therefore be expected to be positive,” the KOF institute said in a statement, adding the core GDP module of the indicator was pointing sharply upwards.
Switzerland’s economy has fared better than those of its austerity-hit European neighbors although sluggish exports to the Europe Union, its biggest trading partner, remained a concern in July.
However, recent data from the euro currency bloc, including business sentiment and private sector growth in Germany, has been more upbeat.
In June, the Swiss government slightly increased its 2013 growth forecast to 1.4 percent, while the Swiss National bank (SNB) stuck to its forecast of 1-1.5 percent growth.
“The KOF says Swiss industry is doing better, that is no surprise. As Europe improves you see the key impact it has on Switzerland,” J. Safra Sarasin economist Alessandro Bee said.
Swiss exports have been supported by a cap the SNB imposed on the soaring franc currency in 2011. But the central bank has warned that the franc remained overvalued and continued to pose risks to the economy.
SNB board member Fritz Zurbruegg said this month the cap on the safe-haven currency would be kept in place for as long as needed.
The Pentagon is taking a harder look at proposed foreign acquisitions of U.S. companies given the increasing financial complexity of such deals, but continues to encourage foreign investment, a top U.S. defense official said this week.
“If you have a deal that is in the interest of the U.S. economy and does not impinge on national security, we will approve it,” said Brett Lambert, the Pentagon’s representative on an interagency committee that reviews foreign takeovers.
Lambert, who retires Saturday after four years as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for manufacturing and industrial policy, bristled at the suggestion that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) was making it difficult for foreign investors to acquire U.S. companies.
“It’s completely the opposite,” Lambert told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
He said foreign interest in U.S. companies remained high, given the continued importance of the U.S. defense market despite recent budget cuts, and said he expected the number of foreign transactions reviewed by CFIUS to double in coming years from more than 100 last year.
“You have foreign capital that wants to come in, which we want, which we encourage. The question is how do we allow that foreign capital to come in while protecting national security,” Lambert said.
He acknowledged that the Defense Department and other agencies involved in the CFIUS review process were often taking longer to review transactions but said that was largely because of the increasing complexity of the transactions.
Lambert said high-profile cases that were rejected tended to generate headlines but the majority of cases were approved, including some with conditions.
He declined to discuss specific CFIUS cases under review, including a $4.7 billion bid by a Chinese company to take over Virginia-based pork producer Smithfield Foods Inc.
The most recent CFIUS report to Congress showed that the committee reviewed 111 transactions in 2011, of which 40 were investigated under a longer 45-day review. Six of the notices were withdrawn. Data for 2012 has not been released.
U.S. lawmakers have raised concerns about various takeover bids by Chinese firms in recent years, but CFIUS approved plans by China’s largest auto parts maker in January to buy car battery maker A123 Systems Inc.
In February, CFIUS approved the $15.1 billion purchase of Canadian oil firm Nexen Inc by China’s state-owned CNOOC Ltd., although it imposed conditions limiting its operation of wells in the Gulf of Mexico.
CFIUS rejected a bid by another Chinese-owned company, Ralls Corp, to build wind farms near a U.S. military site in Oregon, but the company has challenged that decision in court.
Lambert said the Nexen case showed U.S. authorities were willing to work with companies seeking to invest in the United States as long as they showed a willingness to compromise. “We can come to accommodations. We will work with the companies but they have to respect our national security concerns.”
Lambert said foreign companies seeking to invest in the United States should hire lawyers who had already shepherded other deals through the process.
He said government officials also welcomed contact with companies involved in mergers or acquisitions, noting that senior officials in the proposed merger of Europe’s EADS, the parent of Airbus, and Britain’s BAE Systems had been forthcoming about their plans.
Lambert said meeting those officials helped him keep Pentagon leaders informed about the merger, which ultimately collapsed.
Lambert co-founded a national security consultancy, DFI International, in 1989 and then sold it in 2007 to Detica, a London-based firm that was subsequently taken over by BAE Systems. He said he reviewed the CFIUS files on the DFI sale after coming to the Pentagon to understand the process better from the government’s point of view.
{{U.N. experts left Syria on Saturday after investigating a poison gas attack that killed hundreds of civilians, and the United States said it was planning a limited response to punish Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad for the “brutal and flagrant” assault.}}
U.S. President Barack Obama said the United States, which has five cruise-missile equipped destroyers in the region, was in the planning process for a “limited, narrow” military action that would not involve boots on the ground or be open-ended.
In a sign the United States may be preparing to act, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on Friday to the foreign ministers of key European and Gulf allies, as well as the head of the Arab League, a senior State Department official said.
A Reuters witness said the team of U.N. experts arrived at Beirut International Airport on Saturday, after crossing the land border from Syria into Lebanon by foot earlier in the day.
The 20-member team, including experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, have been into the rebel-held areas in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus three times, taking blood and tissue samples from victims. They also took samples of soil, clothing and rocket fragments.
They will be sent to laboratories in Europe, most likely Sweden or Finland, for analysis. The U.N. experts have already been testing for sarin, mustard gas or other toxic agents.
The analysis should establish if a chemical attack took place but not who was responsible for the August 21 attack on a Damascus suburb.
Final results might not be ready for two weeks, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told Security Council members, according to diplomats.
The United States released its own unclassified intelligence report on the attack, which Kerry said killed 1,429 Syrian civilians and was clearly the work of Assad’s forces.
“If we choose to live in the world where a thug and a murderer like Bashar al-Assad can gas thousands of his own people with impunity” it would set a bad example for others, such as Iran, Hezbollah and North Korea, Kerry said.
Syria blames rebels fighting to topple Assad for the attack. Its main ally Russia, which has repeatedly used its U.N. Security Council veto to block forceful action against the Syrian leader, says any attack on Syria would be illegal and only inflame the civil war there.
Syria’s Foreign Ministry repeated its denial that the government had used chemical weapons against its own people. Kerry’s accusations were a “desperate attempt” to justify a military strike. “What he said was lies,” the ministry said.
{{A US military jury on Wednesday sentenced Maj. Nidal Hasan to death for the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, delivering the only punishment the Army believed fit for an attack on fellow unarmed soldiers.}}
The sentence was one that Hasan also appeared to seek in a self-proclaimed effort to become a martyr.
Hasan could become the first U.S. soldier executed in more than half a century. But because the military justice system requires a lengthy appeals process, years or even decades could pass before he is put to death.
The U.S.-born Muslim has said he acted to protect Islamic insurgents abroad from American aggression, and he never denied being the gunman.
He acknowledged to the jury that he pulled the trigger in a crowded waiting room where troops were getting final medical checkups before deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 wounded.
It was the worst ever attack on a U.S. military base.
The same jurors who convicted Hasan last week needed to agree unanimously on a death sentence on Wednesday, though the 42-year-old faced a minimum sentence of life in prison.
The lead prosecutor assured jurors that Hasan would “never be a martyr” despite his attempt to tie the attack to religion.
“He is a criminal. He is a cold-blooded murderer,” Col. Mike Mulligan said Wednesday in his final plea for a rare military death sentence.
{{Bayern Munich winger Franck Ribery won the UEFA Best Player in Europe award for 2012/13 ahead of the usual contenders Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.}}
It was recognition for his part in Bayern’s unprecedented Champions League, Bundesliga and German Cup treble.
The Frenchman was the first player from a club other than Barcelona or Real Madrid to make the final three since the award was established by European soccer’s governing body in 2011.
Argentina’s Messi won the inaugural award followed by Spaniard Andres Iniesta, his Barcelona team mate, last year.
Messi and Real Madrid’s Portugal forward Ronaldo had also both made the last three in each of the two previous years.
{{A suicide attack in Afghanistan’s northern province of Kunduz killed a district governor, along with two of his bodyguards and two civilians at a mosque on Friday, government officials say.}}
The group, which included the governor of the Archi district, were attending a funeral of a tribal elder who had died the day before, the officals said.
“Officials… were attending a prayer in a mosque when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives,” said Enayatullah Khaliq, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
{{The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has lost a vital parliamentary vote endorsing military action against Syria.}}
In an unexpected development, Cameron and his coalition government failed to pass a motion that would have authorised military action against Syria in principle by 285 to 272 votes.
Thursday evening’s vote was non-binding, but in practice the rejection of military strikes means Cameron’s hands are tied.
The British Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond, said that Britain would not take part in any military action.
“I hoped we would carry the argument but we understand there is a deep well of suspicion about involvement in the Middle East,” Hammond told a UK news channel.
The United States, a key ally, would be disappointed that Britain “will not be involved,” he added, but said: “I don’t expect that the lack of British participation will stop any action.”
It was a stunning defeat for a government which had seemed days away from joining the US in possible attacks to punish President Bashar al-Assad’s regime over an alleged chemical weapons attack.
Despite the outcome of the vote, the US said it would “continue to consult” with London, “one of our closest allies and friends”.
“President Obama’s decision-making will be guided by what is in the best interests of the United States,” a White House statement said.
It added that Obama “believes that there are core interests at stake for the United States and that countries who violate international norms regarding chemical weapons need to be held accountable”.
In remarks made on Friday morning, the US Defence Secretary, Chuck Hagel, said that his country would continue to seek “an international coalition” for strikes against Syria.
