2 July 2015
Week in Brief: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
GREECE: Alexis Tsipras rejected the EU’s final deal on economic reform. Consequently, further bail-out funds were withheld so Greece failed to pay the 1.6 billion euros due to the IMF this week.
Tsipras announced a referendum for this Sunday so Greece can vote for or against the austerity measures demanded by the country’s creditors. His government is recommending a ‘no’ vote, which European leaders have acknowledged would almost certainly trigger ejection from the eurozone and the EU.
Greek banks have closed for this week. Following an ECB freeze on the amount of emergency cash available, capital control have been introduced to limit cash withdrawals to 60 euros per day (from those machines which still have cash in them).
More migrants entered Europe via Greece (63,000) this week than via Italy (62,000).
ITALY: Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has said that the repatriation of migrants is “no longer taboo”.
FRANCE: A Frenchman of Algerian and Moroccan parentage murdered and beheaded his employer and tried to blow up the gas storage site where he worked, leaving militant Islamic messages at the scene of the crime. He had been on an anti-terrorist watch list a few years ago. He is now in police custody.
Twin strikes threatened France this week – an air traffic controller’s walk-out from Tuesday to Friday, and a second week of action by ferry workers, who brought Calais to a halt again with another blockade.
There were violent scenes again in Calais as migrants scramble to board vehicles bound for UK.
There were violent protests on the streets of Paris as taxi drivers attacked Uber drivers and vehicles.
France has agreed with the US to pay 60 million dollars in compensation to foreign nationals deported to Nazi death camps on French trains during World War II.
BELGIUM: A coach carrying 34 schoolchildren from Essex hit a bridge and turned over on a Belgium motorway. One of the drivers was killed. Another driver, a teacher and several children were injured, one suffering a skull fracture.
SPAIN: Government figures reveal that home-repossession following mortgage-failure has resulted in 3.4 million empty homes – one third of Europe’s vacant property. The credit crunch burst Spain’s property balloon. Unemployment stands at 23.8 percent.
Anti-corruption prosecutors investigating organised crime on the Costa Blanca have reported links between Russian criminal gangs and Russian officials. Allegations that President Putin secretly owns a luxury villa near Marbella have been denied by the Kremlin.
TURKEY: Turkish police fired rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannon to break up Istanbul’s gay pride parade after authorities tried unsuccessfully to cancel the festival at the last minute.
ARMENIA: Popular protest about rising electricity prices is spreading.
SYRIA: Isis mounted a suicide attack on Kurdish town of Kobani. 36 fighters in five vehicles took part, disguised with non Isis uniforms and flags. It is not known where they came from – Turkey’s deputy foreign minister has denied that they came from Turkey. 19 were killed. Fighting continues, with at least 145 civilians killed by Isis forces according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
TUNISIA: A gunman killed at least 30 tourists (most of them British) during an attack in the resort of Sousse. The gunman was shot dead by security forces. Isis claimed responsibility.
EGYPT: The state prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, was killed in a bomb attack on his convoy in northern Cairo. He was responsible for the prosecution of supporters of the ousted President Morsi and of other opponents of the current regime. Nine other people were hurt, according to the interior ministry.
AFGHANISTAN: Isis is moving into Afghanistan, having taken ground in the eastern province of Nangarhar from the Taliban.
KUWAIT: A Saudi Arabian suicide bomber killed at least 25 Shia worshippers and wounded more than 200 in an attack on the Imam al-Sadiq mosque during Friday prayers. Najd Province, a group associated with Isis, claimed responsibility for this and other recent attacks on Shia targets in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Forty percent of Kuwait’s population are Shia.0
SAUDI ARABIA: Prince Muhammad bin Salman, the deputy crown prince and defence minister, met President Putin of Russia to seal a number of deals including a nuclear co-operation pact. The deputy crown prince is one of the architects of Saudi Arabia’s air offensive against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which is having little military effect without ground forces.
LIBYA: Isis has been ejected from the town of Derna with residents and rival jihadists groups making common cause against the outsiders. Libya Dawn is counter-attacking against Isis in Sirte. Isis is flying in more foreign fighters from the Middle East to its Libyan air-base in Misrata.
YEMEN: UN led peace talks in Geneva collapse. Civilians continue to suffer under Saudi and allies’ airstrikes, with food, water and medical supplies running out, and dengue fever out of control.
Over 1000 prisoners escaped from a jail in central Yemen during an attack by al-Quaeda supporters.
IRAN: Iran is due to sign a nuclear deal with world powers this week in Vienna. The Tuesday deadline was missed as Iran is still reluctant to grant access to all military bases and insists that all sanctions are lifted as soon as the deal is signed, rather than fazed out as compliance is proved. The deal is also opposed by Israel, the Gulf States, US Republican hawks and a number of advisors to Obama’s Democratic government, who this week warned him not to give too much away. The real deadline is July 11, when the US Congress has been given extra time to review deal.
BURMA: Proposals to amend the constitution in favour of more civil power were blocked by the military.
SRI LANKA: President Sirisena dismissed parliament. Elections were to be held early next year, but a snap election will now have to take place.
CHINA: At least 18 people have been killed in Kashgar, Xinjiang, as Chinese Uighur muslims armed with knives and bombs attacked a police checkpoint in response official restrictions on Ramadan customs, according to the US-based Radio Free Asia.
USA: President Obama has been warned by a number of his advisors, past and present, not to give too much away in the deal due to be signed this week with Iran which offers to lift western sanctions against Iran in return for Iran abandoning its nuclear weapons program (see also IRAN above).
The Supreme Court declared marriage to be a universal right protected by the constitution, thus making gay marriage legal across all 50 states.
The two murderers who escaped from prison in New York state two weeks ago by drilling through their cell walls and through metal pipes have been apprehended. Both were shot by police; David Sweat is in custody, Richard Matt was killed.
Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, announced that he will be entering the 2016 race for the White House.
RUSSIA: A Russian cosmonaut, Gennadi Padalka, has just spent a record-breaking 804 days away from earth. The figure is cumulative, built up over spaceflights in 1999, 2004, 2009, 2012 and his current stay on the International Space Station, where he celebrated his 57 birthday last month. He will return to Earth in September, by which time his total will be 877 days.
RWANDA: A pride of lions (two males and five females) from South Africa has been introduced to the Akagera national park, in an attempt to repopulate it. Rwanda’s last lions were killed over ten years ago. The International Union for Conservation of Nature reported that habitat loss in west and central Africa is threatening one in ten wild species with extinction.
