News in Brief
Lebanon’s Parliament fails to elect president for 12th time
AL JAZEERA – Lebanon’s Parliament fails to elect president for 12th time
The main competition was between Jihad Azour, a former finance minister and senior official with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Sleiman Frangieh, leader of the Marada party whose family has a long history in Lebanese politics.
Erdogan:
No change in Turkey’s stance on Sweden’s NATO membership
AP – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that NATO should not bet on his country approving Sweden’s application to join the Western military alliance before a July summit because the Nordic nation has not fully addressed his security concerns.
Sweden and Finland applied for membership together following Russia’s military operation in Ukraine last year. Finland became NATO’s 31st member in April after the Turkish Parliament ratified its request, but Turkey has held off approving Sweden’s bid.
NATO wants to bring Sweden into the fold by the time the leaders of member nations meet for a summit in Lithuania’s capital on July 11-12.
Medvedev: Russia now free to destroy enemies' undersea cables
REUTERS – Russia's Deputy Head of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said there was no reason for Moscow not to destroy its enemies' undersea communication cables given what he said was Western complicity in the Nord Stream pipeline blasts on Sept. 26 last year.
It is still unclear exactly what happened to Nord Stream, a multibillion-dollar project that carried Russian gas to Germany. In recent months, US newspapers have reported that the CIA knew of a Ukrainian plot to attack the pipelines.