Weekday News Wrap: Friday, October 26, 2012

• The NY Times reports on a transcript from the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference that was recently discovered in a library at the US Treasury and has been released as an e-book by the Center for Financial Stability.
• The NY Times also published about the wealth accumulated by the family of outgoing Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiaobao in the past decade. Web access from mainland China to the paper’s English and Chinese websites was promptly blocked.
• A four-day ceasefire is supposed to start in Syria today, but there are still reports of early morning fighting.
• A suicide bomb has killed close to 40 people gathered for prayer in a mosque during the Eid al-Adha holiday in Afghanistan.
• Laos will join the WTO today.
• The EU has urged the Balkan states to address the strong increase of asylum seekers from the region to the EU, at the risk of restrictions on the right of visa-free travel.
• China has expressed strong opposition to Japanese plans to hold joint military drills with the US in early November.
• Foreign Policy reports on Iceland’s newly approved constitution, pulled together partially with crowd-sourced suggestions from Facebook and Twitter.
• Over at the Arms Control Blog, there is a post about the Attorney General of the United Kingdom general giving formal secret advice that a strike on Iran would violate international law.
• As Julian noted in his insightful post yesterday, the US state of Texas has threatened to prosecute the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe’s elections monitor, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, if they enter polling stations to observe the voting process during the upcoming US Presidential election on November 6. As the Chicago Tribune summarized, when it comes to election monitoring, Don’t Mess with Texas!
• In response to the OSCE’s election monitoring, Texas Governor Rick Perry tweeted:

“No UN monitors/inspectors will be part of any TX election process; I commend @TXsecofstate for swift action to clarify issue.”