Reuters, Zurich
Switzerland said on Saturday it had agreed on a “road map” for building business, financial and other links with Iran after Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann met his counterpart Hassan Rouhani in Tehran.
“The aim is to relaunch various dialogues between Switzerland and Iran,” Switzerland’s department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research said in a statement.
Irish govt concedes election defeat
AFP, Dublin
Irish prime minister Enda Kenny conceded defeat on Saturday following elections that saw the governing coalition punished by voters weary of austerity, leaving the eurozone country in political limbo with no clear winner.
“Clearly the government of Fine Gael and Labour are not going to be returned to office,” Kenny, the leader of the centre-right Fine Gael party, told RTE television.
Early indications suggest that Fine Gael and its centre-left junior partner have been hard hit by continued public anger over years of austerity, despite Ireland recording the fastest growth in the European Union.
5 dead in Washington state murder-suicide
Reuters, Seattle
A man fatally shot four people believed to be members of his own family then kept police at bay for several hours on Friday before killing himself, but a 12-year-old girl thought to be the gunman’s daughter escaped the carnage, authorities said. Although details of the slayings inside a rural home near the community of Belfair, about 25 miles (40 km) west of Seattle, remained under investigation, a Mason County Sheriff’s official said the violence appeared to have stemmed from a “family-domestic situation.”
Anti-nuclear arms rally in London
AFP, London
Thousands of people joined a protest in central London today against the renewal of Britain’s nuclear weapons system Trident.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britain’s main opposition Labour party, were set to address a rally following the march. A decision is expected to be taken later this year on replacing the ageing submarines which carry the Trident missiles at an estimated cost of 31 billion pound (39 billion euros, $43 billion).
