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World in Brief: 17/5/2014

Italian ministers approve sell-off of postal service; Portugal officially ends its bailout; US state of Arkansas resumes same-sex marriages

ITALY: Ministers approved the sale of up to 40 per cent of the postal service yesterday as part of a wide-ranging privatisation programme.

Poste Italiane’s sale is expected to raise around €4 billion (£3.3bn) while flogging off air traffic control agency Enav could bring in €1bn (£800 million).

The government is also planning to list up to 49 per cent of state-owned shipbuilder Fincantieri.

BOSNIA: Rescuers were waiting for improved weather yesterday to resume the helicopter evacuations of thousands of people trapped on their roofs in flooded areas of the Balkans.

Bosnia has seen more than 200 landslides that have buried houses and injured people but caused no casualties.

EU forces in Bosnia said neither they nor the Bosnian Army are able to reach some towns except by air, but poor visibility grounded helicopters yesterday.

SYRIA: Five aid workers who were kidnapped in January have been freed, medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Thursday.

MSF said three of the staff members were released on April 4 and the remaining two on Wednesday.

AUSTRALIA: Critics continued their onslaught on the Conservative’s austerity budget yesterday.

Australian National University economist Paul Burke said: “There’s no crisis to see, no emergency to see” despite the government’s harsh rhetoric.

The budget includes cutting more than 16,000 government workers, freezing welfare payments for two years and stripping $80 billion (£45bn) from hospitals and schools.

 

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: President Danilo Medina’ has submitted a Bill to Congress to create a path to citizenship for thousands of people of Haitian descent.

The government said on Thursday that the measure was designed to find a “humanitarian, measured and responsible” solution for those people impacted by a court decision last year narrowing the definition of citizenship.

IRAN: Diplomats said yesterday that talks with six world powers have hit a major snag over the future of Tehran’s nuclear programme.

The disagreement had been looming in the background since talks began on February 18 and both sides reported difficulties as the talks went into their third day.

A Western official, who insisted on anonymity, said the two sides were totally at loggerheads over enrichment.

PORTUGAL: Lisbon officially ended its bailout today after a three-year period of vicious austerity cuts.

But Finance Minister Maria Luis Albuquerque dampened any sense of euphoria.

“It’s not like we’ve struck oil,” Ms Albuquerque said. “The Portuguese economy is still fragile.”

And President Anibal Cavaco Silva pointed out that Portugal won’t have paid back 75 per cent of its bailout loan until 2035 — and will be subject to close financial monitoring by its foreign creditors until then.

UNITED STATES: Gay marriages quickly resumed in Arkansas on Thursday after a state judge expanded his ruling to remove all vestiges of same-sex marriage bans from the state’s laws.

The Arkansas supreme court had claimed on Wednesday that a law that kept clerks from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples remained on the books, despite a ruling last week by Circuit Judge Chris Piazza that declared gay marriage bans unconstitutional. But he revised his order on Thursday.

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