Must-Reads from Around the World, June 8, 2012

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Internal Democracy — The South China Morning Post reports that senior members of the Communist Party held an internal poll in May to select their favored top leaders for the party’s 25-member Politburo and the Politburo Standing Committee, its inner-most cabinet, for the next 10 years. It writes: “If this experiment goes well and delivers a consensus-based line-up, it may well influence how future succession processes are conducted, insiders say.”

Arming your Enemy — As the Guardian reports U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s comments that the Syrian regime has “lost its fundamental humanity” and no longer has any legitimacy, Global Post reveals an unexpected source of arms for the rebels: the Syrian national army. “[A] strange cycle of exchanging prisoners for weapons has been playing out between rebel forces and President Bashar Assad’s army since the beginning of the revolution,” it says.

European Kickoff — As the first day of the Euro 2012 soccer championship kicks off, The Daily Telegraph begins live-blogging from the event, reporting that Dutch players claim to have been racially abused in Poland as they began their warm-ups. It also discusses which songs should represent the England squad, suggesting “I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish” by The Smiths encapsulates the English supporters’ perception of their hitherto disappointing team.

Close to Home — Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper delivers fresh details on the courtroom scandal surrounding Arsalan Mohammad Chaudhry, the son of Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, including the sensational testimony of Kamran Khan, a journalist and anchor of a talk show. The Chief Justice has been forced to recuse himself from the bench hearing allegations of financial misdemeanors against his son.

Poland Today – As Poland is launched onto the global stage as co-host of Euro 2012, the Guardian visits a Polish family living in a former steel town outside Krakow. The family tells the paper that “child support is virtually nonexistent” in their country, “supermarket prices are rocketing” and that Poles returning from working in the U.K. are “more secular in outlook” and that the boom in émigrés has “created broken families.”

Wedded To Change – Following the move in Britain to criminalize forced marriages, The Independent asserts that such relationships expose women to “repeated rape by men they haven’t chosen and quite possibly despise” and insists that the practice should be condemned by the government “as unequivocally as any other form of domestic abuse.”