US and Russian negotiators will hold a new round of talks next week on replacing the START nuclear disarmament treaty in Geneva, a US spokesperson confirmed on Wednesday. "US and Russian negotiators will continue talks on an agreement to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty June 1 to 3 in Geneva," the spokesperson at the US mission in the western Swiss city told AFP. No further details were given on the talks, which follow a first two-day round in Moscow last week and are due to be held behind closed doors at an undisclosed location here. US President Barack Obama is due to travel to Moscow a month later for a groundbreaking summit with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Following a thaw in US-Russian relations in recent months, Washington and Moscow agreed to press ahead with talks on replacing or renewing START... click here for the rest of this AFP article.

Click here for Wikipedia's summary of the START treaty.

Ante Gotovina's defence case is due to begin. When Ante Gotovina led Croatia to a recapture of the breakaway region of Krajina in 1995, many of his compatriots saw him as a hero. The three-month Operation Storm - to crush the self-proclaimed Krajina Serb Republic - brought the former French legionnaire who was once convicted of robbery and extortion to the pinnacle of Croatian nationalism. The first days of the operation changed the course of the war. But it was not long before war crimes prosecutors became interested and soon alleged that now former Gen Gotovina was responsible for a campaign of ethnic cleansing. About 150 Serb civilians were killed and more than 200,000 left their houses in long columns of cars and tractors laden with possessions. This was compounded by widespread destruction of Serb communities - actively encouraged by Mr Gotovina, the UN war crimes tribunal alleges. He was indicted on war crimes charges in 2001, but denies any responsibility... click here for more of this BBC profile.

Elections to 128 seats in the Senate and 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Last Legislative elections were held in July 2006. President Felipe Calderón hopes to win a working legislative majority to push through economic overhauls and continue a crackdown against drugs.

Click here for more from mexidata.info

The eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers is scheduled to meet in Luxembourg. It brings together the finance ministers of the 16 EU member states which have adopted the single European currency. Legally, the group is not an official formation of the Council of the European Union. In September 2004, the eurogroup decided it should have a semi-permanent president, and appointed the prime minister and finance minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker. The eurogroup meetings take place a day ahead of a separate Ecofin council meeting of all EU finance ministers.

The World Economic Forum is scheduled to hold its Africa 2009 conference in Cape Town, South Africa. The event will bring together world leaders to assess the opportunities and challenges of the continent. The theme is 'Uniting Africa's Champions', and the event will focus on areas such as governance, foreign and cross-border investment, health initiatives, food security and technological innovation.

Click here for the World Economic Forum main page.

Click here to know more about the implications of the Global Economic Crisis for Africa.

A 'big day of demonstrations' is scheduled to take place across France, organised by all the main French trades unions. It follows-up to similar actions on 29 January, 19 March and 1 May.

A European Council summit is scheduled to take place 18-19 June in Brussels. Heads of state or government from the 27 EU member states are due to attend. This will be the first European Council after the European elections 4-7 June and the last under the Czech Presidency. A date for the second referendum in Ireland on the Lisbon is expected to be made known at this summit. European leaders may also take a decision on the EU's position for global climate talks to conclude in Copenhagen in December.

Click here for the press information.

When President Obama visits Africa this summer, it promises to be a moment of enormous historic and symbolic resonance for his country and the continent of his father’s family. But it will not exactly be a homecoming, since his ancestral homeland was deemed too troubled to visit. The White House passed over Kenya, where Mr. Obama’s late father was from, in favor of the small nation of Ghana as the site of his first presidential visit to sub-Saharan Africa. A year after Kenya exploded in political violence, it remains a tense and unsettled place. Ghana, by contrast, is an outpost of democracy and civil society in a volatile region. “The president and Mrs. Obama look forward to strengthening the U.S. relationship with one of our most trusted partners in sub-Saharan Africa, and to highlighting the critical role that sound governance and civil society play in promoting lasting development,” the White House said in a written statement announcing the trip on Saturday. Mr. Obama will travel to Accra, the capital of Ghana, on July 10 for an overnight stop at the end of a trip that will first take him to Moscow to meet with Russian leaders and then Sardinia for the annual summit of the Group of Eight powers. Not counting Egypt, where he will travel next month, it will be Mr. Obama’s first trip to Africa as the first African-American president. And while a quick one-night, one-stop visit might not produce the spectacle of a longer journey across the continent, it will surely generate global attention. Among other things, Mr. Obama may visit Cape Coast Castle, the headquarters of the British slave trade on Africa’s Gold Coast. Captured Africans would pass through the castle’s “door of no return” as they were carted off to ships. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush visited African slave posts during their presidencies, but the imagery of an African American president visiting one promises to be far more profound. News reports from the region quoted Ghana’s foreign ministry saying Mr. Obama would go see the notorious slave post, but the White House said Sunday that no schedule has been finalized. White House aides said they might have preferred a longer trip to Africa, along the lines of the one Mr. Obama took in 2006 as a senator, but found themselves constrained by his schedule. A president has certain travel obligations each year because of summits and the like and his foreign policy advisers realized that if they waited for time for an Africa-only trip, it would be later in his tenure. By the time Mr. Obama travels to Russia and Italy in July, he will have been to Europe three times as president and never to sub-Saharan Africa, Asia or Latin America beyond a quick trip to Mexico City. So his advisers agreed to tack the quick Ghana stop onto the end of his Russia-G-8 trip to at least get a marker down before too much time passed... click here for more of this NY Times article on the calculus of President Obama's trip to Ghana.

Click here for CIA factbook on Ghana.

Approaching its presidential election, Iran is in the midst of a censorship drive by the Ahmadinejad government, aimed at blocking his reformist rivals' message. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is running against two reformist candidates, Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, and one fundamentalist, Mohsen Rezai, in the election on 12 June. Facebook and Twitter were among hundreds of websites and blogs filtered recently because they provide a platform for reformist candidates to reach out to Iranian youth. Moussavi, a Facebook member and pro-reform candidate who is now backed by former moderate president Mohammad Khatami, is becoming Ahmadinejad's main rival in the election... for Saeed Kamali Dehghan's article for the Guardian, click here.

Court hearing scheduled to open in Baghadad where Iraq's national intelligence service (Inis) is suing British newspaper, The Guardian. Inis allege defamation over an article published in April by award-winning correspondent Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in which it was suggested that the regime under the current prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was moving in a direction that was becoming increasingly autocratic.

Click here... for the offending article.

Click here... for an article on the case by The Guardian.

Knox is expected today to take to the stand in her case in connection with the murder and rape of 21 year old British student Meredith Kercher. Kercher was found dead with her throat cut in their shared apartment in Perugia on November 2, 2007.

Click here... for an article on the case from The Independent.

An international event marking the 20th anniversary of the first free elections in Poland is scheduled to take place in Krakow. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is due to attend. The former Solidarity leader Lech Walesa has announced that he would not attend the event over accusations that he co-operated with the communist secret police in the early 1970s. In March 2009, Walesa announced that he would not take part in ceremonies commemorating the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism, and that if accusations continued that he would first return all his decorations, then leave Poland altogether.

Click here for an AP article about the coming celebrations.

Click here for the Guardian article over the 'divided Poland'.

Click here for Wikipedia's history of Lech Walesa.

Ceremony in honour of His Holiness during a visit to the capital. The Dalai Lama also gives a public talk on Ethics and Society at the Bercy Omnisports Center. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao warned France against welcoming the spiritual leader. China was due to attend an EU Summit last year but called it off to protest against a meeting between His Holiness and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Click here for the UPI article 'China warns France about Dalai Lama visit'.

The diarist was 13-years-old when she began her account of the daily life of her family and four other Jews in hiding in Amsterdam to avoid deportation by the Nazis. Her father found her hidden diary after the war and published it in 1947 (died March 12, 1945).

Click here for Wikipedia's history of Anne Frank.

Click here for the Herald article about how memory of Anne Frank brings youngsters together.

Click here for the Anne Frank Trust UK website.

Click here for the Anne Frank House website in Amsterdam celebrating her 80th birthday.

Czech Presidency of the EU leads summit with Pakistani delegation, with a focus on tackling terrorism and cooperation on the rule of law. Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi said he hopes to get market access in the EU as trade is better than aid as the former would help generate employment and sustainable economic opportunities.

Click here for an article from the Euobserver.

Click here for an article from the Europeanvoice.

The United Nations International Labour Organisation meets 15-17 June in Geneva. They will be addressing the Global Jobs Crisis. The summit is expected to be attended by nearly one dozen heads of State and government, along with vice-presidents, labour ministers and union leaders from the ILO’s 183 Member States.

Click here for the International Labour Organisation website.

AFP: Labour chief warns of eight-year global 'jobs crisis': A global "jobs crisis" caused by the economic downturn could last for up to eight years, International Labour Organisation chief Juan Somavia said Wednesday. Somavia said at the opening of the UN labour agency's annual conference that about 300 million new jobs would be needed up to 2015 just to keep up with the natural growth in the global labour force. "There are early and welcome signs that the downturn may be losing speed," the ILO Director General said. But economic conditions were still fragile and most analysts were predicting a slow recovery, he added.

Ministers from the USA, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Japan and Italy, plus officials representing the EU, prepare for the G8 summit. Following an initial ministerial meeting, session will be enlarged to involve participants from Afghanistan and Pakistan 'as well as their neighbours and other regional players', a statement posted on the Ministry of foreign affairs reads. Explaining the decision to dedicate the meeting to the region, the statement goes on to say 'Italy is convinced that 2009 will be a crucial year for that region... by virtue of its strategic importance to the foreign policy of the new American administration... [the meeting] will be dedicated to Afghanistan and Pakistan, whose stabilisation needs to be addressed together...'

Elections to the Kuvendi i Republikës së Shqipërisë (Assembly of the Republic of Albania), which has 140 members elected for a four-year term. 100 are elected directly in single-member constituencies containing an approximately equal number of voters. 40 are elected from multi-name lists of parties or party coalitions according to their ranking. The total number of deputies of a party or a party coalition shall be, to the closest extent, proportional to the valid votes won by them on the national scale in the first round of elections. Parties that receive less than 2.5% and party coalitions that receive less than 4% of the valid votes on the national scale in the first round of elections do not benefit from the respective multi-name list. At the last elections, held in July 2005, former President Sali Berisha led the centre-right Democratic Party to victory.

Click here to read an article from AlbaniaEconomy.com.

Why will these elections be a test for Albania's accession into the EU? Click here.

Sudan's controversial President came to power 20 years ago, first as Prime Minister (1989-1993) in an Islamist backed coup, and then as President. In March 2009 the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Bashir for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. But he denied the charges and has dismissed any ruling by the court as worthless...

Click here for a portait of al-Bashir from the Guardian.

Click here for an article about the new Darfur crisis from The Independent.

North Korean and South Korean officials are to hold a rare meeting over the contentious Kaesong Industrial Region.

CNN: North Korean officials agreed to a rare meeting with South Korea to discuss their jointly run industrial complex along their border, a contentious issue for both sides. North Korean officials proposed to meet on June 11, to discuss the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the South Korean Ministry of Unification said. South Korea accepted the offer.The new meeting comes amid nuclear tensions between the two Koreas and following awkward talks in March that ended after only 22 minutes. The March talks were the first government-to-government talks between the two Koreas in more than a year...

Click here... for Wikipedia page on the Kaesong Industrial Region.

The Black Entertainment Television Awards are to take place in Los Angeles. Jamie Foxx is hosting the event whilst also being nominated for three awards himself.

Click here for the 2009 BET nominees.

Click here for a Wikipedia explanation of the history of the awards.

Click here for the Billboard Magazine biography of the awards host Jamie Foxx.

At the 22nd annual ASCAP Rhythm and Soul awards, Smokey Robinson is to be honored with the presitigious ASCAP Rhythm & Soul Heritage Award. The award is bestowed upon those who have significantly impacted upon the legacy of rhythm and soul music. Alicia Keys meanwhile will be recieve the ASCAP Golden Note Award which is given to artists who have reached extraordianary career milestones.

Click here for ASCAP press release announcing Smokey Robinson's award.

Click here for ASCAP press release announcing Alicia Key's award.

Alliance counterparts discuss major operational issues.

Click here for the meeting's programme from the NATO website.

Click here for the Wikipedia history of the NATO.

Juress Kika, 18, Michael Alleyne, 18, and Jade Braithwaite, 19, all from Islington, appear charged with the murder of 16-year-old Ben Kinsella, who was stabbed to death in York Way, Holloway, in the early hours of June 29 2008. Ben was the younger brother of former EastEnders actress Brooke Kinsella, who played Kelly Taylor in the soap. It is thought that Ben had been at a party at the Shillibeers pub, in North Road, when a row broke out with several youths. Kinsella was stabbed 11 times.

Click here for the report from The Press Association.

Click here for the BBC article: 'Youths admitted Kinsella murder'.

Gathering of heads of state and/or government of SCO member countries: People's Republic of China, Russian Federation, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia have observer status at the SCO. Brazil is also represented.

Click here for the Wikipedia's history of the SCO.

Click here for the SCO official website.

Click here for an article from Bernama.com