Morning Brief: West Bank Burning

Americas

• General Motors has filed for bankruptcy protection. The U.S. federal government will take a 60 percent ownership stake in the company. 
• The U.S. and Cuba have agreed to resume talks on migration issues, suspended since 2003.
• Just hours before starting his term, Salvadoran President-elect Mauricio Funes appointed his wife and a former Marxist guerilla to his cabinet.

Asia

• North Korea is reportedly planning another long-range missile test. 
• The Pakistani Army has lifted curfews on several towns in the Swat Valley.
• The majority of the U.S. military's 17,000 additional troops will be in Afghanistan by mid-July.

Middle East

• The Israeli government has thrown out a proposed "loyalty oath" bill aimed at Israeli Arabs that was proposed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's party.
• Nearly a fifth of Kuwaiti lawmakers walked out of the new parliament's first session to protest the makeup of the cabinet.
• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's main election rival Mir Hossein Mousavi has been hammering him on foreign policy.

Europe

• Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer is the latest official accused of abusing public funds in Britain's ongoing MP expenses scandal. 
• An Air France plane carrying 228 people has gone missing over the Atlantic.
• The breakaway territory of South Ossetia elected a parliament. Supporters of pro-Moscow President Edward Kokoity will dominate.

Africa

• Finnish prosecutors will file charges against a Rwandan man accused of killing 15 people during the 1994 genocide.
• Niger Delta militants released a British hostage they had held for nearly nine months. 
• The U.N. says tribal violence in Southern Sudan is now worse than in Darfur.