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Belgium: King accepts government’s resignation

The Belgian political crisis worsened on Monday when King Albert II, left, accepted the government’s resignation, tendered last Thursday, after negotiations failed to solve a dispute between Dutch- and French-speaking legislators over a bilingual voting district. The king asked Prime Minister Yves Leterme to continue in a caretaker capacity, since Belgium takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union on July 1. New elections are likely in the country, which is deeply divided between Dutch-speakers in the north and French-speakers in the

Russia: American seeks denial of visas to 60 Russian officials

Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, asked the State Department on Monday to deny visas to 60 Russian officials who he said were involved in prosecuting and detaining Sergei L. Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer who died in a Moscow jail after having requested medical care. Mr. Magnitsky was held in a tax evasion case against the Hermitage Fund, whose American-born owner had clashed bitterly with Russian officials. The sanctions would apply to senior officials in Russian law-enforcement agencies and their family members. The proposal is based on a 2004 presidential proclamation denying visas to people engaged in corruption.

Italy: 31 charged in illegal immigration ring

Three months after violent race riots shook the Southern Italian city of Rosarno, Italian authorities on Monday broke up an illegal immigration ring in the area, arresting 31 people from Italy and North Africa and seizing 20 businesses and farmland valued at $13.3 million. Prosecutors in Calabria said that middlemen, most from North Africa, had procured immigrants for Italian landowners, who paid them wages as low as $33 a day to work in the fields. The arrests were not directly tied to the riots, in which about 50 people were wounded, but authorities said the illegal immigration ring contributed to the tensions in the area. In January, the police arrested eight people for inciting the riots, but human rights groups have criticized Italian authorities for not making more arrests.

(Published by The New York Times - April 26, 2010)