World News Roundup: Mitsotakis to be sworn in as Greek PM after landslide victory; Spain's conservative PP party lead narrows one month ahead of national election -poll and more

Reuters is reporting this plan and the resulting preliminary probes for the first time. Russian officials emphasise unity after aborted mutiny Senior Russian officials rallied around President Vladimir Putin on Monday, with questions still unanswered about a mutiny by mercenaries that appeared to pose the greatest threat to his grip on power of his 23-year rule.


Devdiscourse News Desk | Updated: 26-06-2023 19:09 IST | Created: 26-06-2023 18:26 IST
World News Roundup: Mitsotakis to be sworn in as Greek PM after landslide victory; Spain's conservative PP party lead narrows one month ahead of national election -poll and more
Kyriakos Mitsotakis Image Credit: Wikipedia

Following is a summary of current world news briefs.

Mitsotakis to be sworn in as Greek PM after landslide victory

Kyriakos Mitsotakis will be sworn in as Greece's prime minister on Monday, a day after a resounding win for his New Democracy party in repeat elections gave him a second four-year term. His centre-right party got an overall majority - 158 seats in the 300-seat parliament - well ahead of the 48 secured by leftist Syriza which ran the country from 2015-2019, at the height of the decade-long economic crisis.

Spain's conservative PP party lead narrows one month ahead of national election -poll

The lead of Spain's conservative People's Party over the left-wing ruling coalition has narrowed one month ahead of a national election on July 23, a poll by El Mundo newspaper said on Monday. The survey, carried out between June 16 and 23, showed the PP would get 140 seats in the 350-member lower house, down from 141 a week earlier. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) would get 102 seats and Sumar, the far-left grouping replacing Podemos, would get 35 seats up from 30 a week earlier, pollster Sigma-Dos said.

Portuguese police burn 6 tonnes of drugs as illicit trade surges

Portuguese police on Monday burned six tonnes of cocaine, hashish and other substances to mark the United Nations' international day against drug abuse and illicit trafficking at a time the illegal trade is booming worldwide. "There are more drugs circulating, there is more supply from producing countries and also more drugs being seized," Rui Sousa, the head of the anti-drug trafficking unit at Portugal's criminal investigation agency (PJ), told reporters in Lisbon.

Sudanese-Canadian campaigns to help adopted sister stranded in Khartoum

A Sudanese-Canadian citizen has been separated from an adopted sister and her children and is trying to help them secure safe passage out of Sudan where they have been stranded for over 10 weeks by the war between rival military factions. Sami Atabani said he hoped the Canadian government would consider evacuating his adopted sister, 43-year-old Kholoud Yagoob Abdallah, even though she does not hold Canadian citizenship like the rest of his close relatives.

U.S. to test its Palestinian dual-nationals' Israeli access in July

The United States will test Palestinian-Americans' freedom of travel in Israel next month as part of preparations for proposed U.S. visa exemptions for Israelis, an official briefed on the preparations said on Monday. Israel has satisfied some conditions for the U.S. Visa Waver Program (VWP), to which it hopes to be admitted by October.

Special Report-US, Swedish prosecutors study graft complaint naming son of Turkey's Erdogan

Anti-corruption authorities in the United States and Sweden are reviewing a complaint alleging that the Swedish affiliate of a U.S. company pledged to pay tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks if a son of Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan helped it secure a dominant market position in the country. The proposed plan was detailed in communications and business documents seen by Reuters, as well as by a person familiar with the matter. Reuters is reporting this plan and the resulting preliminary probes for the first time.

Russian officials emphasise unity after aborted mutiny

Senior Russian officials rallied around President Vladimir Putin on Monday, with questions still unanswered about a mutiny by mercenaries that appeared to pose the greatest threat to his grip on power of his 23-year rule. On the first working day after fighters of the powerful Wagner Group seized a military headquarters and marched on Moscow, officials still gave no details about the deal that abruptly ended the mutiny.

Russian court jails academic Golubkin for 12 years for treason

A Russian court on Monday jailed an academic, Valery Golubkin, for 12 years after convicting him of treason. Golubkin, a professor at a Moscow institute studying aerodynamics, was detained in 2020 on suspicion of handing over secrets to an unnamed NATO country.

Squatting Russian diplomat leaves contested site after Australian court ruling

A Russian diplomat squatting on land set aside for a future Russian embassy in Australia has left after a court ruled that Moscow had no claim to the site near the national parliament in Canberra. Australia on June 15 canceled Russia's lease to build a new embassy citing national security, drawing criticism from the Kremlin, which said the move by Canberra reflected its anti-Russian sentiment.

Analysis-Mutiny lays bare prospect for Putin of 'forever war' in Ukraine

An abortive mutiny in Russia has shown the risks the Kremlin faces from a long, grinding conflict in Ukraine even though it has not handed Kyiv an immediate breakthrough on the battlefield. Many questions still swirl after Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner forces returned to base after Friday's mutiny, which was called off the following day under a deal brokered by the president of Belarus.

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