Hours after his rain-soaked inauguration as president of France, François Hollande flew to Berlin for a summit with Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany. The pair met amid gathering clouds over the prospects for the euro zone as the political crisis in Greece rumbles on. Mr Hollande wants Germany's remedy of austerity for troubled countries to be balanced by growth-promoting measures. See article

After nine days of post-election wrangling political leaders in Greece gave up their attempt to form a government. A new election will be held on June 17th. Polls suggest that parties opposed to the bail-out programme will again do well, raising questions over whether Greece can stay in the euro. See article

Mrs Merkel's centre-right Christian Democratic Union took a walloping in an election in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state. The state is a bellwether for national politics, though the CDU's poor showing was also affected by local factors, including a shoddy campaign by Norbert Röttgen, its main candidate. See article

Ratko Mladic, who led Bosnian Serb forces during the Yugoslav wars of the early 1990s, went on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity in The Hague.

Rebekah Brooks, a former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper operations, her husband and four associates were charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice. The six are accused of concealing material from police in July 2011 during a phone-hacking investigation.

Competition killers

In a fresh outbreak of drug-mob violence in Mexico, at least 49 mutilated bodies were found near Monterrey, apparently killed by the Zetas as a warning to their rivals, the Sinaloa cartel. The incident followed several months in which the murder rate had dropped. See article

Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, installed a truth commission to investigate abuses carried out between 1946 and 1988. The inquiry is likely to focus on events during the military regime of 1964-85.

A long-awaited free-trade agreement signed in 2006 between Colombia and the United States came into force. On the same day two people were killed in a bomb attack on the car of Fernando Londoño, a former Colombian interior minister, who was injured. The police blamed FARC guerrillas. See article

Peru's defence and interior ministers resigned, after public criticism of a security operation in a remote jungle region in which several police and soldiers were killed by Shining Path guerrillas.

Vote for me

Abdel Hakim Belhadj, a powerful Islamist commander in Libya, resigned from his position as head of Tripoli's military council to form his own political party. Mr Belhadj is suing Jack Straw, a former British foreign secretary, for allegedly signing papers that allowed the CIA to transport him back to Libya in 2004 via British territory.

Iran executed Majid Jamali Fashi, whom it accused of working for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, and for being behind the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist on Israel's behalf. Iranian state media said that Mr Fashi confessed to the crime. See article

At least 55 people were killed on May 10th in two bombs in Damascus, the Syrian capital. The al-Nusra Front, an Islamist group, claimed responsibility for the attacks, the worst Syria has seen since its uprising began.

Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails ended a hunger strike that had lasted for weeks, after the Israeli authorities agreed to improve prison conditions. Israeli officials said that Egypt and Jordan helped to end the strike. There had been growing concern about the potential for unrest in the event of a prisoner's death. Caesar Acellam, a senior commander in the Lord's Resistance Army, was captured by Ugandan soldiers in the Central African Republic. Mr Acellam might be able to apply for amnesty under Ugandan law. Joseph Kony, the LRA's leader, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. See article Half the population of South Sudan is facing food shortages because of the continuing conflict with Sudan, according to the United Nations. It said that fighting on the border between the two countries and the shutdown of South Sudan's oil production have devastated the economy. Border co-operation

Pakistan announced that it will reopen NATO supply routes into Afghanistan that it closed in November in response to a NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on the border. Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's president, said he would attend a NATO summit in Chicago on May 20th. See article

Mullah Arsala Rahmani, a negotiator on Afghanistan's High Peace Council and former Taliban minister, was assassinated by a gunman as he travelled in his car.

The International Committee of the Red Cross decided to suspend its work in Pakistan. The decision was made after news that an ICRC worker abducted four months ago in Baluchistan province had been killed in April.

It emerged that four South Korean activists have been arrested in north-east China near the border with North Korea. The activists say they were interviewing North Korean refugees. China says they were spying.

A court in Delhi granted bail to Andimuthu Raja, a former telecoms minister in India. He had been held since February 2011 on corruption charges for granting questionable wireless spectrum licences at giveaway prices in a case that has rocked India's political establishment. See article

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