Australia’s Senate has voted down an asylum bill which would have reopened an off-shore detention centre and allowed the Australian government to deport asylum-seekers to another country for processing.

The bill was supposed to deter asylum-seekers from making the long and dangerous boat journey to Australia. The defeat of the bill means the political stalemate on the asylum debate, which has been reignited by the sinking of two boats in the past week, continues.

The US has given China and Singapore exemptions from sanctions for buying Iranian oil.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that both countries had earned the exemptions by cutting imports.

All of the twenty biggest importers of Iranian oil have been granted reprieves from the sanctions, before the deadline on June 28.

The sanctions would have seen the concerned nations cut off from the US financial system.

Burma is tightening restrictions on press freedom, despite their recent promises to reform and end censorship, warned the press watchdog, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF).

In a report published on Friday, RSF said,

Martin McGuinness, the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland and former IRA commander has met and shook hands with the Queen. The meeting took place at a charity event in Belfast on Wednesday morning.

The image of the handshake has been touted by observers as iconic and a symbol of progress and reconciliation. Sinn Fein quoted McGuinness as telling the Queen that their meeting was a “powerful signal that peace-building requires leadership”.

The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has failed in his attempt to be cleared of all charges at The Hague war crimes tribunal.

Karadzic denies 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

He is accused of being responsible for the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, which left over 7,000 Bosniak men and boys dead.

The judges rejected his acquittal bid, saying that the "genocidal intent" of the accused "may be inferred" from all the evidence.

Russia has said it will support a proposal to form a national unity government, consisting of members of both the government and the opposition.

Kofi Annan’s plan will be discussed at a conference in Geneva on Saturday with the UN Action Group on Syria.

According to Western diplomats, President Assad will not be part of the unity government, although his role is not defined in Annan’s proposals.

Russia has refused to support the removal of Assad as a solution.

Addressing his new Cabinet, the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, remained defiant, and instructed the Cabinet to defeat the 16-month-old uprising.

Assad said,

“We live in a real state of war from all angles,”

“When we are in a war, all policies and all sides and all sectors need to be directed at winning this war.”

An Egyptian journalist was deported by the Sudanese government on Tuesday, as authorities continued to try and end anti-austerity protests.

The journalist, Salma El Wardeny, who works for Bloomberg News, had been covering the protests and uploading videos of protests on the site YouTube.

On Tuesday, when she attempted to renew her press accreditation, she was denied permission, and instructed to leave the country.

Speaking to AFP, Wardany said that had "ordered me to leave".

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has proposed a $10 billion loan for countries in Latin America to fund infrastructure projects.

Speaking near the end of his tour to the region, Premier Wen also proposed a free trade agreement between regional trade bloc Mercosur, which includes Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

South Korean officials have confirmed that oil imports from Iran will be halted from 1 July, due to EU sanctions.

The EU has imposed a ban on insurance of vessels carrying the product, in order to to hit Iranian oil revenue.