France holds presidential elections on May 6th. The first round of the presidential election occurred April 22nd. Current centered right, French President Nicolas Sarkozy seeks to win his second five-year term. Sarkozy faces opposition from the Socialist party candidate, Francois Hollande. Hollande is from the center-left Socialist party and if he wins it would be the first left-wing president in seventeen years, since Francois Mitterand held office in 1995. During the first round Hollande received 28.6% barely beating Sarkozy’s 27.2%.

North Korea fails to launch a satellite. 

North Korea attempted to launch the Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite. The satellite was fired from the Sohae Launching Station in Tongchang-ri along the west coast but failed to reach orbit and disintegrated into pieces over the Yellow Sea after takeoff. Thus both North Korea and the United States affirmed the launch a failure. 

Sudan bombs South Sudan. 

Sudanese warplanes sent out air strikes on South Sudan near Bentiu, a southern oil town and killed three individuals. The air craft dropped four bombs between a Bentiu and the close town of Rubkona. After weeks of border disputes between Sudan and South Sudan the battles may be escalating into a full war. Their civil war that made the succession possible ended in July, but the battles may rekindle these tensions. 

The Argentinean government is spending billions of dollars to import fuel, nearly a decade ago the central American nation was an exporter of oil and natural gas. The energy crisis may lead to the seizing control of its leading oil company from Spain. President Cristina Fernandez angered it’s largest foreign investor, Spain, by expropriating Repsol YPF SA’s majority stake in Argentina’s formerly state-owned YPF energy company.