1 FEMALE PRESIDENT: A high court judge is set to become Greece’s first female president after two opposition parties sided with the center-right government’s nomination. Katerina Sakellaropoulou, 63, has served as president of the Council of State, a top administrative court, for the past 15 months. Government spokesman Stelios Petsas said Tuesday said Sakellaropoulou was set to receive “well beyond” the 200 votes needed for her election in the 300-seat Parliament on Wednesday. Greece has a historically low level of women in senior positions in politics. In the current cabinet, all but one of the 18 senior positions are held by men. The president holds a largely ceremonial position. 2 FRENCH STRIKES: Opening another front in their battle against the French government, protesting workers cut power to thousands of Parisians on Tuesday, plunging homes into darkness and shutting down trains to one of the capital’s main airports. The deliberate outage lasted around two hours. It hit users in the southern suburbs of Paris, which include the Orly international airport and the massive Rungis market that supplies food to the Paris region. Franck Jouanno, a CGT union leader, said power grid workers targeted the area because it is one of “the economic lungs of Europe.” The CGT is pushing for a complete withdrawal of the French government’s plans to overhaul the pension system. The planned reforms have triggered six weeks of protests and crippling transport strikes. 3 PLANE DOWNED: Iran acknowledged on Tuesday that its forces had fired two surface-to-air missiles at a Ukrainian passenger plane that crashed this month near Tehran, confirming for the first time that more than one missile was launched at the jet. Iranian authorities also asked officials in the...
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