Malik Obama, the step-brother of President Obama, said he will run for governor of the western Kenyan county of Siaya, Bloomberg reports.

New York Times: “President Hugo Chávez’s supporters have not ruled out swearing him in from his hospital in Havana. His detractors are calling for government investigators to go check his pulse themselves. The justices whom Mr. Chávez’s allies have named to the Supreme Court have decided that he can continue to govern in absentia.”

“In a country that Mr. Chávez has dominated for so long, his health crisis and the decision to proceed on Thursday with a quasi-presidential inauguration that he is unable to attend are producing a stream of bizarre developments and national angst about who is in charge.”

New York Times: “Some world leaders live in palaces. Some enjoy perks like having a discreet butler, a fleet of yachts or a wine cellar with vintage Champagnes. Then there is José Mujica, the former guerrilla who is Uruguay’s president. He lives in a run-down house on Montevideo’s outskirts with no servants at all. His security detail: two plainclothes officers parked on a dirt road.”

“His net worth upon taking office in 2010 amounted to about $1,800 — the value of the 1987 Volkswagen Beetle parked in his garage. He never wears a tie and donates about 90 percent of his salary, largely to a program for expanding housing for the poor.”

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, 76 years old and still married to his second wife, announced he was engaged to Francesca Pascale, his 27-year old girlfriend, the Telegraph reports.

Said Berlusconi: “Finally I feel less lonely.”

Berlusconi plans to launch his fourth bid to be prime minister in elections expected to be held in February next year unless current Prime Minister Mario Monti decides to run.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange has confirmed his intention to run as a Senate candidate in the 2013 election in Australia “and will announce the formation of a WikiLeaks political party early next year.”

But since Assange is currently living in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, he could be unable to return to Australia if elected — in which case a nominee would fill the seat.

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been sentenced to four years in prison for tax fraud, Sky News reports.

The verdict comes two days after Berlusconi, 76, announced he will not run for premier in upcoming elections.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF head who resigned in disgrace, “is seeking to throw out criminal charges in an inquiry into ties to a prostitution ring in northern France with the legal argument that the authorities are unfairly trying to ‘criminalize lust,'” the New York Times reports.”

“That defense and the investigation, which is facing a critical judicial hearing in late November, have offered a keyhole view into a clandestine practice in certain powerful circles of French society: secret soirees with lawyers, judges, police officials, journalists and musicians that start with a fine meal and end with naked guests and public sex with multiple partners.”

Strauss-Kahn broke his long silence in an interview: “I long thought that I could lead my life as I wanted. And that includes free behavior between consenting adults. There are numerous parties that exist like this in Paris, and you would be surprised to encounter certain people. I was naïve. I was too out of step with French society. I was wrong.”

Australian prime minister Julia Gillard “played her best hand with a brilliant attack on the Conservative opposition leader, Tony Abbott, accusing him of being sexist and a misogynist,” the Telegraph reports.

Gillard was defending parliamentary Speaker Peter Slipper who resigned “just hours after he survived a motion to sack him for lurid text messages he sent to a former staffer.”

The video is extraordinary.

“Defending the indefensible is a pretty tough job and could still cost her dear. But what she did have was an impressive set of insults to launch at the high and mighty Abbott – which has completely and cleverly shifted the focus of the entire news story ever since.”

[Read more…]

New York Times: “Large numbers of Venezuelans turned out to vote on Sunday in a landmark election that could give President Hugo Chávez a new term to extend and deepen his socialist revolution or replace him with a youthful, more moderate challenger, Henrique Capriles Radonski.”

“For the first time since Mr. Chávez took office in 1999, the outcome of a presidential election was in doubt. His long hold on power and his autocratic grip over all branches of government have led some in the opposition to question whether he would accept a defeat.”

Washington Post: “The wild card in the contest between two markedly different men that
began eight months ago is Chavez’s health. The 58-year-old former army
paratrooper, famous for his seemingly boundless energy and his
hours-long speeches, had until the past three months been mostly out of
sight, as doctors here and in Cuba treated him for a cancerous tumor.
Chavez said he is cured, but details of his illness are a state secret.”

Update: The Venezuela electoral council says Chavez won re-election, the AP reports.

The female wing of a civil rights group is urging women in Togo to stage a week-long sex strike — withholding sex from their husbands or partners — to demand the resignation of President Faure Gnassingbe, the AP reports.

Said one of the women leaders to the BBC: “We have many means to oblige men to understand what women want in Togo. If men refuse to hear our cries we will hold another demonstration that will be more powerful than a sex strike.”

“Election regulators named Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood the winner of Egypt’s first competitive presidential elections, handing the Islamist group a symbolic triumph and a new weapon in its struggle for power with the ruling military council,” the New York Times reports.

“But Mr. Morsi’s recognition as president does little to resolve the larger standoff between the generals and the Brotherhood over the balance of power over the institutions of government and the future constitution.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy “is in deep trouble and is looking, for now, as if he could be the first one-term French president since 1981,” the New York Times reports.

“He appears to be running neck and neck with his main challenger, the Socialist candidate François Hollande, in the first round of voting on Sunday, when 10 candidates are competing. But all the opinion polls show Mr. Sarkozy losing to Mr. Hollande in a face-off two weeks later.”

Egyptian election authorities “eliminated three of the country’s leading presidential candidates in one broad stroke on Saturday night in an unexpected decision that once again threw into disarray the contest to shape the future of Egypt,” the New York Times reports.

“The High Election Commission struck down 10 candidates in all, including the three who have generated the most passion in this polarized nation: Khairat el-Shater, the leading strategist of the Muslim Brotherhood; Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, an ultraconservative Islamist; and Omar Suleiman, Mr. Mubarak’s former vice president and intelligence chief.”

The BBC notes the move “comes as a surprise and looks set to dramatically alter the race. Many of those banned and their supporters have expressed anger over the move and large demonstrations are expected in the capital, Cairo.”

The Muslim Brotherhood “nominated its chief strategist and financier Khairat el-Shater on Saturday as its candidate to become Egypt’s first president since Hosni Mubarak, breaking a pledge not to seek the top office and a monopoly on power,” the New York Times reports.

“Because of the Brotherhood’s unrivaled grass-roots organization and popular appeal, Mr. Shater, 62, a multimillionaire business tycoon who was a political prisoner until just a year ago, immediately became a presidential front-runner.”

Reuters: “The move will worry liberals and others who fret about the rising influence of Islamists after they swept parliament and now dominate an assembly writing the new constitution.”

Simon Parkes, a Labour party politician elected last month to the Whitby Town Council, stunned colleagues by claiming his “real mother” is a 9 ft green alien with eight fingers, the Northern Echo reports.

Although he has had “hundreds of close encounters with extra-terrestrials,” he insisted “it will not interfere with his mission to help residents at the seaside resort.”

No one knew even though Parkes detailed his alien contacts in a video last year.

[Read more…]

After months of street protests calling for his resignation, Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh signed an agreement immediately transferring power to his vice president, the New York Times reports.

“The agreement effectively ends Mr. Saleh’s 33 years of authoritarian rule, making him the fourth leader forced from power by the Arab Spring revolts that have roiled the Middle East and North Africa. But it is unlikely to restore calm anytime soon to a country that has become increasingly important to the United States as Islamist militants have gained a stronger hold there.”

Silvio Berlusconi “has resigned as prime minister of Italy after a historic vote paved the way for a new government in Rome tasked with shoring up the country’s economy and taking it off the frontline in the eurozone crisis,” the Guardian reports.

“With his formal resignation, which was confirmed by the presidential palace on Saturday night, the 75-year-old billionaire brought down the curtain on a government that has played a significant role in taking the European single currency and the global economy to the brink of catastrophe. The dramatic end of Berlusconi’s 17-year domination of Italian politics came as the lower house of parliament approved a package of savage cuts and stimulus measures demanded by the European Union to trim Italy’s massive €1.9 trillion debt.”

Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party has a new get out the vote advertisement which Ben Smith notes “conflates voting and sex in a way that makes no sense but has great production values and a compelling beat.”

The tagline: “Let’s do it together.”

[Read more…]