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In his first TV address from the Oval Office of the White House, President Obama spoke of the disastrous implications of the Gulf of Mexico oil-spill and criticised both BP and US regulatory bodies. The following day he met the BP chairman and reached agreement for a US$20bn BP-funded but independently administered compensation fund for those affected by the oil-spill; he also got BPs agreement not to pay shareholder dividends in 2010.

After 12 years the Saville Inquiry into the 1972 killings on Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland said that the march fired on by members of the Parachute Regiment was peaceful in character and no weapons had been carried by those taking part in it. The British prime minister, David Cameron, said that he accepted the findings without qualification, that what had happened was wrong and that he was deeply sorry.

More than two thousand people lost their lives during sectarian violence in the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan. The minority Uzbecks were the principal victims and thousands of them tried to reach neighboring Uzbekistan after their homes had been burnt and families killed.