17 September 2015

Week in Brief: INTERNATIONAL NEWS

AFGHANISTAN:  The Taliban attacked a prison south of Kabul and freed 400 inmates.

AUSTRALIA:  Tony Abbot has been replaced as prime minister in an internal Liberal party coup.

EGYPT:  The government of prime minister Ibrahim Mahlab has resigned, amid accusations of corruption.

Eight tourists from Mexico and four tour guides were killed when their party was attacked by military helicopters mistaking them for a group of terrorists.

EU:  Frontex, the European Union border agency, has warned of the widespread use of forged Syrian passports among immigrants.  In addition to counterfeits, 3800 blank Syrian passports were stolen last year, each one worth £4000 to criminal gangs.

An emergency meeting of EU interior ministers to consider the imposition of compulsory quotas for the acceptance of migrants in each EU member state achieved nothing.

Austria, Finland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary have announced that they will be restoring border controls as the only way of coping with migrants.

FRANCE:  ‘La Voix du Nord’ newspaper has reported that police have tracked a suspected jihadist , thought to be planning terror attacks in the UK, to the migrant camp at Calais, which is a no-go area for police.

GERMANY:  In a double U-turn, the interior minister Thomas de Maiziere introduced border controls (in defiance of the EU’s Schengen agreement) to restrict immigration, and also reversed Chancellor Merkel’s decision to allow Syrians to claim asylum in Germany irrespective of which country they entered the EU through.

INDIA:  The government confronted the Saudi Arabian ambassador with claims that one of his diplomats imprisoned, beat and raped two Nepalese women in his flat.

Two British tourists were killed and a dozen more injured when a train took a bend at speed and came off the track on its way through the Himalayan foothills to Shimla.

Ninety people were killed in a restaurant when mine detonators stored in the building next door exploded.

ISRAEL:  Police raided the al-Aqsa mosque on Temple Mount (Islam’s third holiest mosque), apparently to arrest a group of stone-throwing Palestinians, in advance of visits to the Mount by Jewish Israelis at their New Year.  Clashes between police and Palestinians at the site continue.

JAPAN:  At least one person has drowned, two are missing and more than 100,000 have fled their homes as torrential rain has brought floods and landslides.

NORTH KOREA:  An official statement said that the nuclear facilities at the Yongbyon plant have been improved and they will soon be increasing the country’s nuclear arsenal.

OCEANS:  The WWF’s ‘Living Blue Planet’ report says that marine life – fish, seabirds and mammals – has halved since 1970.  Over-fishing and the destruction of habitat has caused a catastrophic decline in ocean life.

SAUDI ARABIA:  Over 100 worshippers were killed and almost 300 wounded when a crane collapsed during a storm and crashed through the roof of the Grand Mosque onto worshippers in Mecca.  A royal court order has blamed the Binladin construction company for not properly securing the crane; the company was founded 84 years ago by the father of Osama bin Laden, and is the second largest construction company in the world.  The annual haj pilgrimage is due to start in a few week’s time.

SOUTH AFRICA:  Fossilised bones from 15 skeletons of a hitherto unknown ancestor of modern man have been found buried in a deep underground cave.  The species – named Homo naledi – was about 5 feet tall, had a brain half the size of modern man, lived two million years ago and apparently honoured its dead with ritual burial.

SYRIA:  Isis took the government airbase of Abu Alduhur and is attacking another at Deir ez-Zor.

Russia continues to increase its military support of the Assad government, according to Israel’s defence minister Moshe Yaalon. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported that Russians are enlarging three government-held airports. US officials say that new satellite imagery suggests that Russia is building military air-bases, defended by Russian tanks and armoured personnel carriers.

TURKEY:  Pro-Kurdish MPs attempted to enter the city of Cizre, where a military curfew is in place while the army conducts operations against PKK rebels there.  The MPs fear that the curfew is causing a humanitarian crisis in the city.

A curfew was imposed on the city of Diyarbakir. Two policemen were killed by a Kurdish militants’ car-bomb at a checkpoint, according to security sources. Other sources claim that six people were killed when Turkish forces shelled the fleeing militants.

UKRAINE:  A Russian-led initiative has removed Andrei Purgin, the speaker of the rebel Donetsk People’s Republic’s parliament.  He has been replaced by his deputy, Denis Pushilin.  Purgin was a New Russia hard-liner, advocating complete independence from Kiev, whereas Pushilin is involved in the Minsk cease-fire and peace talks.  The West is seeing this as a reassuringly conciliatory move by the Kremlin.  For the first time in 18 months, a full twenty-four hours passed without any shelling in East Ukraine.

USA:  Lack of funds has forced Rick Perry, a former governor of Texas, to withdraw from the race to become the Republican presidential candidate.

Hundreds of homes have been destroyed by wildfire in California. The state has been suffering a four-year drought, and conditions are at their driest for five centuries.

VENEZUELA:  Leopoldo Lopez, an opposition leader and ex-mayor, has been jailed for over thirteen years by a closed military court on charges of incitement to violence from last year’s anti-government riots.

YEMEN:  Yemen’s exiled government pulled out of UN-backed peace talks, and the ground troops of the Saudi-led coalition which supports it began an offensive to retake the capital’s Marib province from the Houthi rebels.