Globe Trot 08.06

India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, himself a Sikh member, called the Sunday afternoon attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin a "dastardly attack." Federal law enforcement officers this morning confirmed Wade Michael Page, 40, and a U.S. Army veteran, as the suspected gunmen in a shooting that killed six, and said they considered it an act of "domestic terrorism." Page also died. More here on attacks on Sikhs in the United States, where they number approximately 300,000. In India they make up just under 2 percent of the population, slightly less than India's Christian population.

Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab has fled with his family to Jordan, marking the highest profile defection from the government of President Bashar al-Assad. State television said Hijab had been fired, but a spokesman for Hijab read his defection statement on Al Jazeera: "I announce today my defection from the killing and terrorist regime and I announce that I have joined the ranks of the freedom and dignity revolution."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, traveling in southern Africa, today paid an in-home visit to aging South African icon and former President Nelson Mandela, 94. In Malawi, Clinton and her delegation fought an attack by a swarm of bees as they prepared to board a plane for departure. Perhaps not as legendary as Clinton's 1996 "landing under sniper fire" in Bosnia, which was later disputed by those traveling with her, local press said the bee attack created-for the record-a "mini-panic."

Tropical Storm Ernesto is tracking west and could pass over the coast of Honduras before making landfall late Tuesday or early Wednesday, likely somewhere in the Yucatan Peninsula.

Standard & Poor's has downgraded 15 of Italy's largest banks, saying the country's recession will be deeper and last longer than predicted.