After Ireland’s voters endorsed the European Union’s Lisbon treaty by 67% to 33%, the focus switched to the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, who is refusing to sign the document until a court ruling on it. This did not stop Brussels gossips from discussing who might be the first permanent president of the European Council, with Britain’s Tony Blair an early favourite. See article

Italy’s constitutional court threw out a law giving Silvio Berlusconi immunity from prosecution. At least two cases against the Italian prime minister will now resume, including one in which a British lawyer, David Mills, has already been convicted of accepting a bribe. See article

At the Conservative Party conference in Manchester the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, set out plans for swingeing cuts in government spending, reduced middle-class benefits and public-sector pay freezes. The Tories are expected to win next year’s British election. See article

AFPAn election in Greece was convincingly won by the Socialist party, Pasok, which had been in opposition. The new prime minister will be George Papandreou, a former foreign minister whose father and grandfather also served as prime ministers. See article

After shocks
A week after an earthquake devastated the city of Padang and surrounding areas on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, some remote villages had still to receive help. More than 1,000 people were confirmed dead, with thousands more still missing.

In the Philippines hundreds of thousands of people remained stranded by floods caused by Typhoon Ketsana. By mid-week, about 500,000 people were still living in emergency shelters.

APNorth Korea said it was prepared to rejoin the six-party talks aimed at ending its nuclear programme. It made the announcement during a visit by Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, during which he met Kim Jong Il, the country’s dictator. But North Korea again insisted on first holding bilateral talks with America. See article

Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained leader of the opposition in Myanmar, met a minister from the ruling junta for the first time in two years. This followed a letter from Miss Suu Kyi to General Than Shwe, the junta’s leader, offering her co-operation in helping to get international sanctions against Myanmar lifted.

Shoichi Nakagawa, a former Japanese finance minister, forced to resign in February after seeming to be drunk at a G7 meeting in Rome, was found dead at his home. The police said suicide was unlikely to be the cause of death. See article

A bombing in Kabul near the Indian embassy killed at least 12 people. The Taliban have stepped up their attacks in the Afghan capital over the past month. Meanwhile, the former deputy-head of the UN mission in Afghanistan accused his former boss of suppressing evidence of fraud in the presidential election in August.

Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan?
The debate in America about the war in Afghanistan became increasingly politicised. Robert Gates, America’s defence secretary, said that the army should submit its advice in private after General Stanley McChrystal, America’s commander in Afghanistan, gave a speech in which he said a proposal to scale back America’s troop commitments was “short-sighted”. Barack Obama is reviewing policy.

In Britain, meanwhile, a row broke out when General Sir Richard Dannatt, a former army chief who has said troop levels in Afghanistan are inadequate, became an adviser to the Conservatives. Some in the Labour government accused him of breaching a “sacred trust” that the armed forces should remain impartial. See article

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office produced its assessment of the Senate Finance Committee’s health-care bill. It found the legislation would extend insurance coverage to 29m people at a cost of $829 billion over ten years, but, crucially, would not add to the budget deficit.

Kofi-flavoured reforms
Kofi Annan, a former UN secretary-general, went to Kenya to urge the coalition government to “accelerate” its reform programme, agreed on with Mr Annan when he brokered a deal between the government and opposition after the post-election violence in early 2008. Electoral, judicial, constitutional and land reforms have all stalled, and there are fears that the chaos at the last poll will be repeated at the next election, due in 2012. See article

There were clashes between the Israeli police and Palestinians around the religious site known as Haram al-Sharif to Muslims and Temple Mount to Jews in Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority (PA) accused the Israelis of trying to “take over Jerusalem and Judaise it”; the Israelis briefly arrested the head of Israel’s Islamic movement for inciting violence.

Palestinians were vehement in their criticism of Mahmoud Abbas, who presides over the PA, for a decision to postpone an endorsement of the UN Goldstone report, which is highly critical of Israel’s attack on Gaza this year. To assuage his critics, Mr Abbas ordered an internal inquiry into why the PA did not endorse the report, and backed a Libyan attempt to discuss the document at the Security Council. See article

Obama out of The Loop
AFPRio de Janeiro was awarded the 2016 Olympics, the first time the games will be held in South America. Despite a last-minute lobbying visit to the International Olympic Committee by Barack Obama, Chicago was the first of the finalists, which also included Madrid and Tokyo, to be eliminated. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who lobbied longer, said the result signalled that Brazil was no longer a “second-class country”. See article

The de facto government in Honduras lifted a state of siege imposed after the return of Manuel Zelaya, the ousted president. It also held talks on a proposed settlement with a delegation for the Organisation of American States.

Rafael Calderón, the president of Costa Rica from 1990-94, was sentenced to five years in prison for embezzling a Finnish loan for medical equipment for hospitals in 2004.

In Chile two army generals and two colonels were jailed for the murder in 1992, when General Augusto Pinochet headed the army, of another colonel who had testified about an illegal arms deal with Croatia.