Jeffrey Goldberg thinks a personal visit from U.S. president Barack Obama could forestall any unilateral Israeli action against Iran.

A look at Indian-Peruvian relations.

Reuters looks at possible successors to Ethopian prime minister Meles Zenawi, who died Tuesday.

Renewed clashes in Sunni-dominated Tripoli, in Lebanon’s north, are increasing cautions about Syrian spillover.

Dutch Socialist Emile Roemer is bearish on the euro crisis.

FT Alphaville turns to the Dutch elections.

Romania’s Constitution Court invalidated the referendum on impeaching the president, Traian Băsescu, and prime minister Victor Ponta accepts the ruling.

Longtime pro-Euro Tory and justice minister Kenneth Clarke seems nervous in advance of a planned cabinet reshuffle expected from UK prime minister David Cameron in early September.

Liberal Party fundraiser Jean-Paul Boily calls on Liberal supporters to support the newly-formed Coalition avenir Québec in the Sept. 4 election as a strategic manuever to stop a sovereigntist Parti québécois government.

NOTE: I will be live-blogging tonight’s Québec election debate between Liberal premier Jean Charest and CAQ leader François Legault.

Spiegel interviews Russian blogger Alexi Navalny.

Park Guen-hye wins the formal nomination of the Saenuri Party in South Korea for the presidential election in December.

The new cold war on the South China Sea.

What comes next for fallen Chongqing leader Bo Xilai?

The French right wants a comeback for French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Former Front de gauche presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon is calling out the Hollande administration for doing too little in its first 100 days.

Greece’s government may have found €13.5 billion in cuts.

The Constitutional Court of Romania will decide tomorrow whether to validate the referendum on president Traian Băsescu’s impeachment.

Emile Roemer is under fire in the Dutch election for his statement that he would refuse to pay fines to the European Union if the Dutch budget exceeds 3% of GDP.

More evidence that the Angolan election on August 31 will be neither free nor fair.

In Canada, François Legault, the leader of the upstart new Coalition avenir Québec, wants young Quebeckers to be more like Asians.

Brazil gets a $66 billion stimulus package.

Venezuela’s latest model for Bolivar is actually French.

The geopolitical future of the Arctic.

ThreeHundredEight‘s latest forecast shows a potential majority government for the Parti québécois after the Sept. 4 election in Québec.

Politics is starting to resume in Ghana following the death of president John Atta Mills.

One man’s view on the Lugo ‘coup’ in Paraguay (spoiler: it has to do with the United States and oil).

Bunga, bunga is costly, costly: Silvio Berlusconi is no longer among the top 10 richest in Italy.

A troubling sign with regard to press freedom in Mohammed Morsi’s Egypt.

Libya’s new national assembly president is moderate Islamist and Qadaffi opponent Mohamed al-Magariaf.

London mayor Boris Johnson tells fellow Tory and UK prime minister David Cameron to stop ‘pussyfooting around’ on expanding London airports.

Benjamin Netanyahu appoints Kadima legislator Avi Dichter as new home front defense minister and potentially a deciding vote in Israel’s inner security cabinet on the issue of launching a strike on Iranian’s nuclear facilities.

Australia contemplates how to get its offshore asylum-seeker detention center up and running in Nauru.

Québec premier Jean Charest attacks the newly ascendant Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ).

Corruption is becoming the main theme of the Sept. 4 election in Québec.

Doug Schoen argues that the recent conviction of former Mongolian president Nambar Enkhbayar is politically motivated.

Spiegel considers the troika of potential leaders of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (the Social Democratic Party) in advance of Germany’s federal election in 2013 (but doesn’t mention Hannelore Kraft!)

Newly-minted Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has voted in the past to lift the U.S. embargo of Cuba.

Speaking of Cuba, Fidel Castro turns 86 today. Granma’s coverage here.

An interview with Chinese artist-dissident Ai Weiwei.

Anders Åslund at the Peterson Institute for International Economics looks to the breakups of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and the Austro-Hungarian Empire for lessons to the current eurozone crisis.

Australian prime minister Julie Gillard backs down over boat refugees, will support processing centers in Nauru and Papau New Guinea.

I somehow missed it from the May/June issue of the American Interest, but it’s good weekend reading from Tyler Cowen on U.S. export growth and what it means for the global (and U.S.) economy.

Not entirely unrelated, an expat on China on why he’s leaving the People’s Republic (for good).

Also not entirely unrelated, Edward Hugh at A Fistful of Euros makes the case for pessimism on Italy.

Brazil gets a new affirmative action law in higher education for Afro-Brazilians, mestizos and indigenous students.

Could Germany hold a referendum on transferring more power to Brussels?

All of China is watching the trial of Gu Kailai (wife of former Chongqing chief Bo Xilai), who’s now admitted to committing murder.

The great Teddy Bear War of 2012 between Sweden and Belarus intensifies.

Per The Economist‘s Banyan, India gets a new anti-corruption party.

Will Anglophone Quebeckers be tempted away from Jean Charest’s Liberals by the center-right Coalition Avenir Québec?

All eyes in China (and Hong Kong) are fixed on the the murder trial of Gu Kailai, the wife of disgraced Chongqing chief Bo Xilai.

Lebanon’s current “March 8” government, headed by Tripoli businessman Nijab Mikati, has not surprisingly drafted an elections law that would benefit the “March 8” coalition against the “March 14” coalition.

Libya’s National Transition Council hands over power to the new 200-seat electoral assembly in the other Tripoli.

Why the Israeli left can’t effectively market itself.

FT Alpahville has a nice primer on the appreciation of the Australian dollar (or the South Pacific Swiss franc).

Fresh out of prison, Conrad Black calls Pauline Marois a “mediocre sovereigntist bag-lady.”

Italian prime minister Mario Monti walks back his comments from yesterday that Italy’s debt yield spread would be 1200 basis points if his predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi, were still in charge.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy makes his first public comments since losing the May presidential election in calling for France and international intervention in Syria.

The Dutch Socialists takes the lead in the poll in advance of Sept. 12 elections.

Pia Kjærsgaard, who founded Denmark’s populist right-wing party, the Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People’s Party) in 1995 (which is now the third-largest party in the Danish parliament, is stepping down as leader.

Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi fires his intelligence chief (with the military’s blessing).

South Korea’s leading presidential candidate Park Geun-hye takes a more flexible stance on the history of her father’s coup (which led to his rule of South Korea from 1961 to 1979).

Mario vs. Mario vs. Mariano.

Brussels is impressed with neither Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte nor the Dutch electorate (English summary here).

Spencer Ackerman at Foreign Policy takes a look at Pussy Riot and their turn as the face of the Russian opposition.

NPR continues some superb coverage of the Mali separatist crisis.

Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur, former governor of the Bank of Ghana, has been sworn in as the new vice president of Ghana.

Former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet argues that economic empowerment for women is central to future Latin American prosperity.

The Queen shakes hands with Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness (sporting a stylish green outfit!)

Martin Wolf says Spain should have just said no to the euro.

Antonis Samaras won’t be able to travel for the next 40 days. (Will Greece even still be solvent by then?)

Facing the real possibility of its own political extinction, PASOK is already distancing itself from Samaras’s government.  (Will the government even last for the next 40 days?)

Merkel on eurobonds: not ‘as long as I live’.

President-elect Morsi will appoint a female and a Coptic vice president, apparently. If true, that would be quite something.

Bagehot wonders if a Brixit is coming.

In Egypt, SCAF’s order reinstating parts of the ’emergency law’ to facilitate citizen detainment has been invalidated by an administrative court.

FT Alphaville gives us a lesson on the Indian rupee and on Oscar Wilde:

“Cecily, you will read your Political Economy in my absence. The chapter on the Fall of the Rupee you may omit. It is somewhat too sensational. Even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side.”

Ousted Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo is now mounting a challenge to his impeachment, as the Organization of American States starts to weigh its response.

An interview from allAfrica with Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

The PAN is declaring open war on “vulgar cheerleader” and “traitor” Vicente Fox.

Soros on Europe.

Serbia is still wrangling over forming a government.

Abdoulaye Wade is not fading away in Senegal.

Lots of folks are running for president of South Korea.

Beijing prepares for a transition in Hong Kong.

Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki is leaning autocrat these days.