Pheu Thai Party list MP Yingluck Shinawatra was elected Thailand's 28th prime minister with a majority vote in the House of Representatives on the morning of August 5.

Thailand's caretaker Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said that he has paved an easy path for the next government during a televised public speech on August 4.

US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced on August 4 that an agreement has been reached between House and Senate leaders to put the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) back to work, two weeks after thousands of the agency's employees were furloughed due to a funding impasse.

Debt-laden Italy is likely to default, but Spain might just avoid it, according to the British think tank, the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

A French court is to investigate the new head of the IMF for abuse of authority as French finance minister.

President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil has replaced her defence minister after he made disparaging remarks about other senior officials.

Two roadside bombs rattled the capital city of Iraq's western province of Anbar on August 3, killing seven people and wounding 15 others, a local police source said.

Three men in charge of nuclear power safety and policy have been sacked amid the ongoing crisis at the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The UN Security Council has condemned the Syrian government for its deadly crackdown on protesters.

An undersea earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale struck off Sumatra Island earlier August 4, but no tsunami threat was reported, the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency reported here.