SYRIA VIOLENCE

Today the Local Coordination Committee opposition group reported that 80 people were killed around the country today although this claim could not be independently verified. Today Lynn Pascoe, U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs, addressed the UN Security council saying “The cessation of armed violence remains incomplete… Too many lives have been lost, human rights violations are still perpetrated with impunity. It is our hope that the deployment of observers will help to stop the killing and consolidate the calm.” The first UN observers entered Syria on April 15 and the UN mission, UNSMIS, was approved to be expanded on Saturday. ◊

BOMBS DROPPED ON SOUTH SUDAN

South Sudan blames Sudan. Sudan denies involvement.

Today residents and officials in South Sudan said that planes from Sudan bombed a market in Unity’s capital city of Bentiu. Sudan denied carrying out the air raids. A Reuters journalist saw an aircraft dropping two bombs and the dead body of one boy. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s office issued a statement saying Ban “condemns the aerial bombardment on South Sudan by Sudanese Armed Forces”. ◊

ICELAND PM CLEARED OF MOST CHARGES

The only leader in the world to face prosecution over the crisis is found mostly innocent.

Today Iceland’s former prime minister, Geir Haarde, was found innocent to three major charges of negligence concerning the 2008 economic crisis and guilty of failing to hold dedicated cabinet meetings before the crisis by a 15-judge court of the Icelandic state. Haarde criticized the guilty finding, saying “It is obvious that the majority of the judges have found themselves pressed to come up with a guilty verdict on one point, however minor, to save the neck of the parliamentarians who instigated this”. ◊

EGYPT REJECTS PERMITS FOR NGOS

Today Egypt’s caretaker government rejected applications for operating permits from eight US-based civil society groups, explaining that the operations of the groups in Egypt “contradicts state sovereignty”. The Ministry of Insurance and Social Affairs denied permits to groups given as the Carter Center, American Security Institute, Seeds of Peace, International Education Association, Latter-day Saints Association, Coptic Orphans and two groups whose names as rendered “could not easily be identified”, according to McClatchy News. Earlier this year, the Egyptian government announced it would try 43 workers of various civil society organisations –including the US-government controlled NDI and IRI, two of the four child organisations of the NED–, accusing them of setting up branches of international organisations in Egypt without a license and of receiving illegal foreign funding. ◊