he governments of THAILAND and CAMBODIA

NIAN warships passed through Egypt's Suez Canal for the first time in more than three decades, en route to Syria. Israel described the ships' presence off the Israeli coast as a "provocation".



Prosecutors in BRAZIL started an investigation into Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose presidential term ended last year, for spending $3.5m of public funds in 2004 to send letters promoting low-interest loans. The prosecutors say the letters had no legitimate purpose and only served to benefit a bank that was subsequently linked to a corruption scandal.



CUBA released seven more political prisoners, bringing the total to 70 freed since last year. One of the released prisoners is refusing, unlike all the others, to go into exile.



GERMANY'S ruling Christian Democratic Union suffered a heavy defeat in a state election in Hamburg. In a bad week for Angela Merkel her defence minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, was embroiled in a plagiarism scandal that forced him to relinquish his doctorate. And after eight weeks of tortuous negotiations, her government agreed on a costly compromise with the opposition over reforms to unemployment benefits and the minimum wage.



Thousands of BASQUES marched in Bilbao in support of allowing the registration of Sortu, a new separatist party. Its predecessor, Batasuna, was outlawed in 2003 for having links to ETA, an armed terror group. Prosecutors want Sortu to be banned, too.



A new government was formed in KOSOVO. Parliament elected Hashim Thaci to serve a second term as prime minister, despite allegations linking him to a murder and organ-harvesting scandal after the Kosovo war in 1999.



Christchurch, NEW ZEALAND'S second-largest city, was devastated by an earthquake and several aftershocks. Scores of people died and hundreds were missing in New Zealand's worst natural disaster for 80 years. Damages were estimated at $6 billion. John Key, the prime minister, said it could turn out to be the country's "darkest day".



An online campaign urged people in Beijing and a dozen other cities in CHINA to heed the example of the "jasmine revolution" sweeping the Arab world and to converge in public places to call for political and economic rights. Very few civilians turned up, but police were out in droves and censors banned the word "jasmine" from China's microblogs. Activists reported that a number of their leaders were arrested ahead of the protests.



AFGHANISTAN suffered several suicide-bombings. The most lethal attack killed at least 38 people queuing at a bank in the eastern city of Jalalabad. Others killed dozens in four other cities. Meanwhile, it was alleged that a NATO-led operation had resulted in the deaths of 64 civilians in Kunar province. An outgoing UN official said that security is "at its lowest point" in Afghanistan since 2001.



The governments of THAILAND and CAMBODIA agreed to let the Association of South-East Asian N
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