SINGAPORE
Parliament speaker quits
The speaker of Singapore’s parliament resigned after admitting to an extramarital affair, adding to a list of scandals that have undermined the city-state’s reputation for clean and efficient governance. Michael Palmer, the speaker and a member of Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party, said his conduct was “improper” and a “serious error of judgment,” according to reports by the strait-laced island’s state media. The woman Palmer had an affair with was employed by a government statutory board and worked in Palmer’s constituency. Palmer said he resigned Wednesday to avoid further embarrassment to the parliament and the ruling party, which has been in power since 1959.
ARGENTINA
Acquittal sparks outrage
The acquittal of 13 people accused in the disappearance of a young woman who was allegedly kidnapped and forced into prostitution for “VIP clients” spread shock and outrage across Argentina on Wednesday, prompting street protests and calls by political leaders to impeach the three judges who delivered the verdict. Many called the ruling a setback for Argentina’s efforts to combat sex trafficking, which began largely as a result of Susana Trimarco’s one-woman, decade-long quest to find her missing daughter, Maria de los Angeles “Marita” Veron. Her attorneys said she would pursue appeals.
HONDURAS
Justices’ dismissal studied
Honduras’ political standoff escalated Wednesday as legal officials debated whether a congressional vote to remove four Supreme Court justices violated the constitution. Attorney General Luis Rubi decried the early-morning vote to dismiss the justices after they rejected a plan by President Porfirio Lobo to clean up the corrupt national police. He said his office is studying whether the lawmakers can be prosecuted. “No one is above the law, not the congress, not the president of the congress or of the republic,” Rubi said. The vote early Wednesday would replace four of the five justices on the constitutional chamber, a committee of the Supreme Court, whose justices have been serving since January 2009 and have been overruling Lobo’s attempts at reform.
Compiled from wire reports.
