4 June 2015
Week in Brief:INTERNATIONAL NEWS
USA: Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator and runner-up in the 2012 Republican primaries, has declared that he will be running for the 2016 presidential elections. The Democrat Martin O’Malley, a former governor of Maryland and mayor of Baltimore, has also declared that he will be entering the race for the White House.
Nebraska has abolished the death penalty. The state legislature voted 30 to 19 to end capital punishment. The state’s governor, republican Pete Ricketts, attempted unsuccessfully to pre-empt the vote by signing a veto the day before. Now nineteen states do not have the death penalty.
A US army laboratory in Utah sent live anthrax samples by mistake to nine military facilities in the US and one in South Korea. The spores, for research and testing, should have been irradiated and killed before despatch.
The House of Representatives passed a bill recognising space property rights under federal law, giving owner of asteroid resources to whoever mines them. This is considered to be the first step – although it is expected to be challenged and amended in the Senate – towards a new industry of harvesting the mineral resources of asteroids.
The US removed Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, opening the States to Cuban financial institutions and moving the two countries towards a restoration of diplomatic ties.
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, broke his leg in a cycling accident in the French Alps. He has been flown from a hospital in Geneva to one in Boston. He was in Geneva for nuclear negotiations with the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and was due in Madrid and Paris this week for an international meeting about Isis.
The Senate failed to renew surveillance powers granted to security agencies by the Patriot Act and due to expire this week. The attempt was blocked by Rand Paul, the libertarian Republican senator for Kentucky who is running in the 2016 race for the White House.
New figures suggest that over 400 civilians – 100 of them unarmed – have been killed by police this year. Others figures show that gun-crime is on the rise for the first time in two decades.
RUSSIA: Evidence for direct Russian military intervention in Ukraine has been gathered and published by the Atlantic Council think tank. The Kremlin continues to deny the presence of Russian troops in the Ukraine, but President Putin has signed a decree making it illegal to report military casualties during peacetime.
An investigative journalism agency, Bellingcat, has claimed that two satellite images released by Russian authorities and appearing to blame a Ukrainian missile launcher for downing the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 had been digitally altered using Adobe Photoshop.
Moscow has banned 89 Western public figures from visiting Russia, in retaliation for travel bans imposed by the EU on colleagues of President Putin over the Russian take-over of the Crimea. The list includes former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, the former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the director general of MI5 Andrew Parker, the former head of MI6 Sir John Sawers, defence minister Philip Dunne and former MEP Edward McMillan-Scott.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, a journalist and critic of President Putin’s government, is critically ill after a sudden and mysterious collapse. He was a colleague of Boris Nemtsov, the opposition politician who was murdered on the streets of Moscow last February. An inquest in Britain was recently told that traces of ‘heartbreak grass’, a rare poisonous plant, were found in the stomach of Alexander Perepilichny, a Russian businessman and anti-corruption campaigner who fled to Britain in 2009 and died mysteriously after suddenly collapsing in 2012.
SWITZERLAND: Seven senior executives of FIFA were arrested by police acting on US warrants. They are to be extradited to the US to face charges of fraud brought by the FBI, the attorney general’s office and the IRS after three years of corruption investigations. Swiss authorities also seized thousands of documents as part of their investigations into accusations that Russia and Quatar paid bribes to host the next two world cups. Sepp Blatter won a fifth term as FIFA president, despite criticism of his leadership. He resigned four days later.
SPAIN: Evidence for the earliest known murder has been uncovered by archaeologists reassembling a 430,000 year old skull from bone fragments found in the Atapuerco mountains near Burgos. Two holes in the forehead suggest fatal wounds inflicted by a weapon of stone or wood. The victim was a young Neanderthal adult, and his discovery is reported in the journal Plos One.
FRANCE: France is struggling with an influx of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East. Police closed down camps in the centre of Paris and violence broke out in camps at Calais.
ITALY: Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia was overtaken by the Northern League as Italy’s largest right-wing opposition party in last weekend’s regional elections.
A record 5,500 migrants crossed the Mediterranean from Africa and the Middle East last weekend.
GREECE: The Syriza government has agreed to a sell-off of state-owned concerns such as the Piraeus Port Authority, in spite of their anti-austerity election pledges. However, talks between Greece and its creditors about economic reforms remain deadlocked. A debt repayment of 310 million euros is due to the IMF this Friday.
SYRIA: The Assad government’s depleted military forces are being augmented by thousands of men from the Shia populations of Afghanistan and Pakistan. These troops are reportedly being recruited and paid for by Iran, to fight against the largely Sunni rebel forces backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.
It has been reported that Kurdish militias, who are fighting Isis State forces, are forcing Sunnis from their homes and villages in North East Syria. It is thought that approximately 10,000 Sunni Arabs are now refugees, and have fled to Isis controlled territory
IRAQ: Car bombs killed at least 15 people and wounded 42 others at two hotels in the centre of Baghdad. A third bomb was discovered and defused.
In Paris, a meeting of leaders from 20 western countries backed Iraq’s plan to use Shia militias and other sectarian forces such as Sunni tribesmen to fight back against Isis.
IRAN: UN inspectors have calculated that Iran has increased its quantities of low enriched uranium by 20% since negotiations with the international community began over a year ago. Iran has been told that it must reduce this stock if a final agreement is to be reached which would be acceptable to the US and Israel. On the other hand, the Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Iran its complying with its promise to cut its quantity of weapons grade uranium
SAUDI ARABIA: An Isis suicide bomber killed at least two people when he blew himself up outside a Shia mosque in Dammam during Friday prayers. He had been trying to enter the mosque disguised as a woman.
QATAR: More than 1993 migrant construction workers have died since the country won the bid for the 2022 World Cup, according to the International Trade Union Confederation. The total will rise to 4000 over the next seven years, the Confederation claimed, blaming high temperatures, dangerous working conditions and poor living standards.
LIBYA: Isis forces completed their capture of the coastal town of Sirte, including the Ghardabiya airbase, from Libya Dawn, one of the two administrations in Libya currently at war with each other. There are fears that Isis could use its control of these areas along the North coast of Libya to mount attacks on Europe.
ISRAEL/GAZA: Amnesty International has published a report alleging that during last year’s military operations by Israel in Gaza, Hamas took the opportunity to torture and kill people it regarded as its political opponents in the Hamas controlled territory. Hamas has denied the allegations and has said the those executed had been suspected of being complicit in the killing of Palestinian fighters.
ETHIOPIA: The 3 million year old remains of a previously unknown species of hominid, now named Australopithecus deyiremeda, have been found in Afar.
NIGERIA: Three suicide bombs killed at least 80 people.
INDIA: A heatwave has killed almost 1500 people in the last week. Temperatures of more than 47C were recorded at the city of Nagpur, Maharashtra.
CHINA: A cruise boat capsized on the Yangtze River with 400 passengers on board. Only 15 survivors have so far been rescued.
Smoking has been forbidden in public places in Beijing.
JAPAN: Two powerful earthquakes struck in the Pacific and were felt in Japan this week. The second measured 7.8, injured a dozen people, shook buildings in Tokyo and triggered an eruption of the volcano Mount Shindake on the island of Kuchinoerabu, where the 100 inhabitants had to be evacuated. It is feared that more destructive quakes will follow.
