The centre-right New Democracy party came first in parliamentary elections in Greece, just ahead of Syriza, the radical-left coalition. The PanHellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) was a distant third. Antonis Samaras, New Democracy's leader, was sworn in as prime minister after his party, along with Pasok and Democratic Left, another leftist party, agreed to form a government that intends to renegotiate some of the terms of the country's bail-out. François Hollande's Socialist Party won an absolute majority in the second round of parliamentary elections in France, taking 314 seats, well above the 289 needed to secure a majority. The Socialists now control almost all France's political institutions. Doctors in Britain took industrial action for the first time in almost 40 years by refusing to carry out non-urgent care in a dispute over pensions. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, sought political asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, days after Britain's Supreme Court rejected his final appeal against extradition to Sweden to face sex-crime charges. An inside job? A court in Virginia indicted Mauricio Santoyo, a retired Colombian police general, for conspiring to help drug gangs and right-wing paramilitaries distribute cocaine in the United States. General Santoyo, who will fight the charges, is alleged to have passed on intelligence to the traffickers while serving as the head of security for Álvaro Uribe, Colombia's former president. In Canada the opposition forced votes on 800 amendments to the budget bill, after a marathon parliamentary session that lasted nearly 24 hours. This was in protest at the government's decision to use the bill to pass other, unrelated, measures. Michel Martelly, Haiti's president, promulgated a new constitution that gives dual nationality to 2m Haitians abroad, plus the right to own land and run for public office. A cold spring Muhammad Morsi, a Muslim Brother, was thought to have won Egypt's run-off for the presidency against Ahmed Shafiq, a general who was the ousted Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister. But the army council that was supposed to oversee a transition to democracy had yet to announce the result. And having got the constitutional court to dissolve the recently elected parliament dominated by the Brothers, a power struggle between the army and those seeking untrammelled democracy looked likely to persist. The mood of uncertainty in Egypt was heightened by total confusion about whether Hosni Mubarak had died. An official report said he was clinically dead; his lawyer said he had a blood clot on his neck and was being treated. After the death of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Nayef, his 76-year-old brother, Prince Salman, was appointed as the next heir to King Abdullah, who is thought to be 89. Protests against spending cuts and food-price rises under the government of President Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, persisted for several days. In Tunisia disturbances by fundamentalist Salafists in Tunis, the capital, were dealt with by riot police. Talks in Moscow aimed at ending the crisis over the alleged military dimensions of Iran's nuclear programme broke down. The gap between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, remains wide. Iran insists on recognition of its right to enrich uranium "for peaceful purposes" and a lifting of sanctions, but the six powers will not make concessions until Iran agrees to a broad range of "confidence-building" measures. The lack of progress will increase speculation about a possible Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. A dream comes to pass In the biggest shake-up to immigration policy in America for years, Barack Obama announced that the government would no longer deport illegal immigrants under the age of 30 who had been brought to the United States as children, had been in education or the armed forces and had no criminal record. The policy is similar to the DREAM act, a bill in Congress that has been blocked by Republicans. The White House got into a constitutional spat with the Republican-controlled House of Representatives when it invoked executive privilege, for the first time in Mr Obama's presidency, to withhold documents subpoenaed by a committee relating to a controversial undercover anti-gun-running operation. Pressing matters In Myanmar violence between Buddhists and Muslims in the western state of Rakhine was said to have killed at least 50 people and displaced 90,000. Neighbouring Bangladesh refused entry to any more refugees and closed its border. Meanwhile, Myanmar's president, Thein Sein, pledged a second round of reform, this time focused on the economy and privatisation. Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar's democracy movement, continued her two-week tour of Europe. She visited Norway to be presented with her 1991 Nobel peace prize and Britain to accept an honorary civil-law doctorate from Oxford, which she had also been unable to collect while she was under house arrest in Myanmar. Pakistan's Supreme Court dismissed Yousaf Raza Gilani as prime minister for contempt of court after he refused to pursue corruption charges against President Asif Ali Zardari. The decision deepened the animosity between the court and the civilian government. Mr Gilani's replacement is Makhadoom Shahabuddin, noted more for his loyalty to the president than for his ministerial talents. Tension lessened in the South China Sea between China and the Philippines, when the Philippines withdrew its ships from the disputed Scarborough Shoal area. The two countries have been in a stand-off over the disputed territory since April. The Philippine foreign ministry stressed that the ships were forced back by a tropical storm. Australia unveiled a plan for the world's largest network of marine parks. They will cover 3.1m square kilometres of ocean, including the Coral Sea and the Great Barrier Reef off the north-east coast. Limited fishing and energy exploration will still be allowed.