Spain, Greece evacuating embassy workers from Libya

Spain said on Thursday it was pulling its ambassador and embassy staff out of Libya temporarily, Reuters said. Madrid evacuated 29 Spanish residents and their families on Tuesday. “The situation in Libya will get much worse very quickly,” Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo told parliament, as clashes among rival militia push the North African country further into chaos. Greece is also sending vessels to Libya to evacuate embassy workers and a few hundred Chinese and European nationals.

Ukrainian parliament votes against PM Yatsenyuk’s resignation

Ukrainian parliament overwhelmingly rejected Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk’s resignation on Thursday, Reuters said. MPs earlier in the day approved legislation the prime minister said was needed to avoid a financial default.

Snowden’s asylum application to be decided in 1-2 days

Former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden is waiting for the Russian authorities’ decision, either to extend his temporary asylum in Russia for another year, or to grant him political asylum, Itar-Tass quoted his lawyer Anatoly Kucherena as saying Thursday. His current one-year temporary asylum permit, issued by the Federal Migration Service, expires July 31. “We hope that the issue will be resolved today or tomorrow,”Kucherena told LifeNews TV.