INTERNATIONAL MAY 2010

INTERNATIONAL MAY 2010

• According to Google’s web traffic data, Facebook.com is most visited website with monthly visits by 540 million people, or slightly more than 35 per cent of the Internet population. 
• Nepal political parties UCPN-Maoist, the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML agreed to extend the term of the Constituent Assembly by one year as part of a crucial deal under which Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal agreed to step down.
• In the midst of heightened tensions, North Korea announced the unilateral scrapping of its pact with South Korea on the prevention of naval clashes between them. 
• The annual ministerial meeting of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was held in Paris with Economy and Trade Ministers from 40 countries, representing 80 per cent of the world economy attended. India, Russia, Brazil ,China, Indonesia and South Africa have been invited to participate as observers.
• Citing lack of evidence, the Pakistan Supreme Court upheld the Lahore High Court's decision to release Jama'at-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed from house arrest.
• The world's most expensive postage stamp “Treskilling Yellow” printed in Sweden in 1857, was sold at auction in Geneva to an international consortium.
• The National Commission co-chaired by Bob Graham and William Reilly was established to investigate the oil spill from British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded on April 20 and has since been spewing massive amounts of oil into the Gulf of Mexico seriously endangering its marine life and the coastlands of Louisiana. 
• The French Cabinet approved a draft law to ban the Muslim full-face veil from public spaces.
• A deal was reached to swap a major part of Iran’s low enriched uranium stocks on Turkish soil for an equivalent amount of uranium enriched to 19.75 percent among Iran, Turkey and Brazil.
• Iran has freed Clotilde Reiss, French lecturer charged with spying following last June's presidential elections.
• The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has warned that efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labour have slowed down and called for a “re-energised” global campaign to end the practice. In its global report on child labour, the ILO said the global number of child labourers had declined from 222 million to 215 million, or 3 per cent, over the period 2004 to 2008, representing a “slowing down of the global pace of reduction.” 
• The Conservative leader David Cameron took over as Prime Minister and his Liberal Democrat counterpart Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister in the Britain's first post-war coalition government. 
• The second Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) in which 32 nations attended was held in Abu Dhabi. 
• The short film ‘Last of the Tattooed Head Hunters’, on one of North East’s fiercest fighters, Konyak Nagas, directed by Vikeyeno Zao, will be screened at the annual Cannes Film Festival beginning May 12. 
• Pakistan said it had successfully tested two surface-to-surface missiles Ghaznavi and Shaheen capable of carrying both nuclear and conventional warheads. 
• Britain's most closely-contested election resulted in a hung Parliament and the defeat for the ruling Labour Party after 13 years in power. The conservative party ended up with 306 seats, 20 short of an outright majority .The Labour party got 258 seats and the Liberal Democrats got 57 seats. 
• The four-week nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference was held at the United Nations in New York.
• Sri Lankan President government has decided to pardon journalist J.S. Tissainayagam, who is out on bail after being convicted in August last year under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). The pardon coincided with the World Press Freedom Day. 
• Iran and Syria have mooted the formation of a regional economic bloc with Turkey and Iraq as their key partners. The two sides felt the move would yield economic benefits and impart political stability and security to the region.