Germany German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder lost a parliamentary confidence vote he engineered, raising the prospect of early elections and a widely predicted change in government. EU Britain took on the presidency of the crisis-hit European Union, promising conciliatory leadership even as it renewed a bitterly contested drive for economic reform of the bloc. Mideast Israel lifted its blockade of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip after security forces stormed an abandoned hotel comandeered by ultra-nationalists opposed to the pullout from the territory. Iraq A top aide to Iraq's Shiite spiritual leader was among 18 people killed in insurgent attacks across the country, including a bombing near an office of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's party. Dagestan A large bomb killed 10 interior ministry soldiers and wounded at least seven others outside a public bath in southern Russia's volatile Dagestan republic, the local deputy prosecutor said. Turkey Turkish police shot dead a wanted radical leftist after he attempted to blow up home-made explosives wrapped around his body at the justice ministry in a crowded Ankara neighborhood, media reports said. Afghanistan US forces are searching for a small American reconnaissance team which has been missing since a special forces helicopter sent in to extract them was shot down in Afghanistan, the military said. US US President George W. Bush called for answers after former hostages implicated Iran's hardline president-elect, Mahmood Ahmadinejad, in the dramatic 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran. G8 British Prime Minister Tony Blair is considering leaving US President George W. Bush isolated over climate change at next week's summit of Group of Eight rich nations in Scotland, the Guardian newspaper said, quoting cabinet colleagues. Zimbabwe UN special envoy Anna Tibaijuka said conditions at a holding camp set up by Zimbabwe for people evicted in a clean-up blitz needed improvement after meeting residents. Philippines Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, fighting off opposition demands to quit over alleged vote-rigging, suffered a further setback when the Supreme Court suspended the expansion of an unpopular consumption tax hours after it came into effect. Italy The US ambassador to Italy Mel Sembler went to the office of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who summoned him to explain an alleged CIA kidnapping of an Islamic cleric in Milan two years ago, journalists on the scene said. US The US space shuttle Discovery will blast off July 13 for the first shuttle mission since the Columbia disaster grounded the flights in February 2003, NASA announced.