WORLD AGENDA MAY 2009

May 4, Malawi: Madonna appeals against a court ruling that she can not adopt four-year-old Mercy James. The U.S. star, who adopted a Malawian boy in 2006, has been told she cannot adopt a second child because she is not a resident.

May 6, Tbilisi: Nato military exercises, involving 1,300 troops from 19 countries, begin in Georgia, despite demands from Russia that they be called off. The former Soviet republic, invaded by Moscow last August, is seeking membership of the western alliance.

May 7, Prague: The European Union launches its “Eastern Partnership” programme with six former Soviet states. The plan aims to improve aid, trade and energy ties with Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova and Belarus.

May 8, Jerusalem: Pope Benedict XVI begins a week-long pilgrimage to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The visit is an effort to ease tensions over the canonization of Pope Pius XII, accused of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust.

May 10, Ramallah: The spray-painting of a 1,998-word open letter by South African human rights activist Farid Esack is completed along a three-kilometre stretch of the concrete barrier that separates Israel and the West Bank.

May 13, New York: Countries wishing to lay claim to extensions of their continental shelf must make their submissions before the United Nations deadline. If a claim is approved, it confers the right to exploit mineral resources on and below the seabed.

May 16, India: Electronic counting of India’s massive general election for its 1 billion-plus population takes place, three days after the final round of five phases of polling. Jostling for post-poll agreements to form a new coalition government then begins.

Early May, France: The bodies of 400 unnamed Allied soldiers, killed in the Battle of Fromelles in July 1916, are to be exhumed and identified using DNA tests. Mass graves were found at the site of the two-day battle in 2008.

May, Brussels/Washington: The European Central Bank is expected to lower interest rates to 1% (May 7) as the world continues to battle the global recession. In the United States, the recession becomes the longest since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

May (undated), Riyadh: International human rights and child protection groups will closely monitor the appeals court in Saudi Arabia which hears the case of the marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a 47-year-old man. A judge has twice refused to annul the union.

May (undated), Gulf of Aden: Japan and Sweden join international efforts to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia where hundreds of sailors have been captured and held for ransom. Tokyo has been agonising over the decision because of its post-war pacifist constitution.
/ENDS