Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 10 July

In today's Brief: Egypt's political turmoil. China's new president. The US Navy's historic pilot-less flight. Women's rights in Afghanistan and some good news springs from the death of Doma... Are there any clues as to whether the tenure of China's new president will be different from his predecessors'? Maya Wang, China researcher, compares Xi Jingping's rhetoric to reality... The US Navy reached a milestone in drone navigation by piloting the X-47B almost entirely by computer and landing it on an aircraft carrier... Such advances highlight the need for governments to pre-emptively ban killer robots because of the danger they would pose to civilians in armed conflict... Afghanistan underwent it's first ever review by the UN's Committee on the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Heather Barr live-tweeted the session... The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has been ratified by 186 countries, though not the United States.... In Macedonia, anti-gay thugs are targeting people who support equal rights on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and the government seems to be turning a blind eye... DOMA: On a positive note, important public services are reaching people previously denied them, as the Supreme Court's landmark decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act takes tangible effect... From this morning... In Egypt, economist Hazem el-Beblawi was named yesterday as the country's new prime minister. He was expected to offer cabinet posts to the Muslim Brotherhood of ousted president Mohamed Morsy, but the Islamist group has already said it is not interested in participating in the proposed transitional structure. The main anti-Morsy liberal group is also demanding changes to the political roadmap put forward by interim president Adly Mansour in a "constitutional declaration", which includes a review of the constitution and an elections timetable. It's hard to see any route out of the political impasse just yet.