News in Brief
Greek PM gunning for outright victory in second vote
REUTERS – Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Monday he will not seek to form a coalition government following this weekend’s election, paving the way for a second vote in June he hopes his conservative party will win outright.
New Democracy won 40.8% of the vote versus 20.1% for the leftist Syriza, in a stunning boost for Mitsotakis. But it fell short of the number of seats needed to govern on its own, triggering a round of coalition talks among the three biggest parties.
Turkey’s third-place candidate endorses Erdogan
REUTERS – Turkey’s third-place election candidate endorsed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday, boosting the incumbent and intensifying the challenges for opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu in a Sunday runoff vote.
Sinan Ogan, a hardline nationalist who was little known among the broader public before the campaign, won 5.2% support in the initial presidential election on May 14, prompting some analysts to call him a potential “kingmaker” for the
runoff.
China chides Japan, UK over
G7 summit
AP – China’s Global Times on Monday called the Group of Seven summit an “anti-China workshop,” after Beijing summoned Japan’s envoy and berated Britain in a fiery response to statements issued at the weekend G7 summit in Hiroshima.
A joint communique issued on Saturday singled out China on issues from Taiwan and nuclear arms to economic coercion and human rights abuses, underscoring the wide-ranging tensions between Beijing and the group of rich countries that includes the United States.