18 June 2o15
Week in Brief: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
GREECE: The IMF withdrew from talks with Greece, after negotiations about economic reforms remained deadlocked.
ITALY: President Putin of Russia met prime minister Matteo Renzi in Milan, reminding him of the high economic price Italy is paying for the EU sanctions against Russia and Russia’s retaliatory embargo on European goods. Italy is Russia’s third biggest trading partner after Germany and China.
Italy renewed its call to other EU countries to take in more of the many thousands of refugees from Africa and the Middle East landing on its shores.
SPAIN: King Felipe stripped his sister Princess Cristina of the title Duchess of Palma in Majorca. She will stand trial later this year with her husband, who is accused of tax evasion and embezzlement.
FRANCE: Dominic Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the IMF and Socialist politician, was acquitted of hiring prostitutes.
BRUSSELS: Nigel Farage of UKIP joined forces with Marine le Pen of the French National Front to try to stop the European parliament “forbidding financing of political parties in the EU by political or economic stakeholders outside the EU”. They were out-voted. Last year, the French press revealed that Marine le Pen’s National Front received loans of at least nine million euros from a Russian bank reputedly linked to Mr Putin.
The European Commission has started an investigation into the activities of Amazon on the basis that the company may have distorted the market in the ebook trade by stifling competition. Amazon is already under investigation by the Commission in connection with its tax arrangements in Luxembourg.
SLOVAKIA: A South Korean man was taken ill with Mers (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, also known as camel flu) in Zilina. Mers is an incurable viral infection, fatal to over a third of its sufferers. It has been spreading through South Korea for the last month, with 154 cases and 15 deaths.
RUSSIA: Russian hackers are being blamed for last month’s cyber attack on the German parliament’s computer systems and for the previous month’s attack on the international French television network TV5Monde.
At an arms show near Moscow, President Putin announced that Russia will be adding more than 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles to its nuclear arsenal this year.
GEORGIA: Lions, tigers, wolves, hyenas, bears, hippopotomi and other wild animals are roaming the streets of Tbilisi after floods swept away their zoo enclosures. Floods and landslides have destroyed buildings and killed nine people, with over twenty missing.
AZERBAIJAN: The European Games opened in Baku, preceded by a clamp-down on human rights activists. About 100 journalists and critics have been imprisoned recently, including the corruption investigator Khadija Ismayilova who has been in prison for seven months without trial. Two swimmers from Austria are in intensive care after a shuttle-bus ran into them at the athletes’ village.
ISRAEL: Security experts are blaming Israel for a computer virus found spying on three European hotels where high-level talks about the US/Iranian nuclear negotiations are taking place.
EGYPT: Police shot two armed men trying to attack the Temple of Karnac in Luxor, a well-known tourist site. A third man blew himself up. No tourists were hurt. Last week a gunman killed two police officers at the Giza pyramids outside Cairo.
The leaders of 26 African countries signed a free-trade deal in a summit at Sharm el-Sheik, approving the creation of the Tripartite Free Trade Area which will cover 625 million people, almost two thirds of Africa’s population.
A prisoners’ rights group, Freedom for the Brave, claims that over 150 activists and dissidents have disappeared in the last two months. The Interior Ministry denies that the authorities abduct people.
SAUDI ARABIA: This week’s flogging of the blogger Raif Badawi has been delayed.
YEMEN: A Saudi Arabian airstrike on the capital Sanna damaged the city’s historic old town (a World Heritage Site) and killed five civilians.
Yemeni political groups arrived in Geneva for peace talks organised by the UN.
Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP), has been killed in a US drone strike. His death was confirmed in a video statement by al-Qaeda. AQAP claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris.
IRAQ: Reports from Tikrit claim that the Shia militias who retook the city from Isis in April have since looted it and driven out its Sunni population. The use of such Iranian-backed militias by the government of Iraq has always raised fears that the conflict with Isis will degenerate into a Shia/Sunni civil war rather than a war of liberation, and enable Iran to increase its influence in Iraq.
The body of Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein’s spokesman who died in prison last week, went missing at Baghdad airport, according to his daughter Zeinab Aziz. It eventually made it to Jordan where the funeral took place.
SYRIA: Kurdish forces have captured the town of Tel Abyad from Isis after a three week assault and with the aid of US airstrikes. The border town is on the main route from Turkey to the Isis capital Raqqa. Thousands of refugees have been displaced from the area.
LIBYA: Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the terrorist who led the attack on a gas facility in Libya in 2013 where 38 hostages were killed, has been reported dead by Libyan authorities after a US airstrike in eastern Libya.
SOUTH AFRICA: President Bashir of Sudan escaped arrest when he flew to South Africa and back to attend the 25th African Union summit. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court in the Hague, accused of crimes against humanity.
PAKISTAN: The British charity Save the Children has been shut down and ordered to leave the country. State officials have accused it of links to the CIA and other “anti-Pakistan activities”. Following concerns expressed by the US state department, however, the Islamabad interior ministry then claimed that the action had been suspended. Save the Children has been working in Pakistan for 35 years, and all its 1,200 employees there are Pakistani (non-Pakistani staff were forced to leave last year).
MALAYSIA: A group of tourists including a British woman, Eleanor Hawkins, 23, was arrested for posing naked for photos on Mount Kinabalu, a holy mountain. A local tribe believes their disrespect was responsible for the earthquake which killed 18 climbers and destroyed villages six days later. Ms Hawkins was released after a fine of £860 and a sentence of three days in prison.
CHINA: Zhou Yongkang, China’s security chief who retired three years ago, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for accepting bribes, abusing his power and disclosing state secrets.
USA: Jeb Bush (the former governor of Florida) and Donald Trump (the property tycoon) have announced that they will be standing for the Republican nomination for president of the United States.
Six Irish students were killed and seven injured in Berkeley, California, when a balcony collapsed during a 21st birthday party.
The Pentagon is proposing to stock weapons and equipment for the first time in Nato member states that were once part of the Soviet Union. The proposal was made in advance of the Nato defence ministers’ meeting in Brussels later this month.
UNITED NATIONS: Cases of UN peace-keeping troop exploiting the people they should be helping came to light in a leaked UN report. Sexual favours are brought from women and children by some peacekeepers in missions to Haiti, Congo, Liberia and Southern Sudan. There are about 123,000 UN peacekeepers from 120 countries deployed around the world.
COMET 67P (CHURYUMOV-GERASIMENKO): Philae, the lander dropped onto Comet 67P by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft last year, sent an 85 second radio signal to the ESA. The lander had been silent since landing in deep shade on the comet’s surface, unable to recharge its solar-powered batteries. It is hoped that it is undamaged and that its batteries are now recharging as the comet moves closer to the sun, which would enable it to resume information-gathering and communications with earth.
