1 October 2015
Week in Brief: INTERNATIONAL
AFGHANISTAN: The Taliban have captured the northern city of Kunduz.
BANGLADESH: An Italian aid worker was shot dead in Dhaka. ISIS have claimed responsibility for the murder.
BURKINA FASO: Last week’s military coup has failed. Soldiers have withdrawn from the capital Ouagadougou. The transitional government of interim president Michel Kafando and interim prime minister Yacouba Isaac Zida, who were both arrested, has been reinstalled. However, next month’s elections have been postponed and the leaders of the coup have not disarmed.
EGYPT: The two Al Jazeera journalists jailed in August for ‘fabricating’ news have been pardoned. Mohamed Fahmy, an Egyptian Canadian, and Baher Mohamed, an Egyptian, have been freed with 100 other people including a number of human rights activists to mark the festival of Eid al-Adha. The pardons were issued in advance of President Sisi attending the UN general assembly in New York.
EU AND MIGRANT CRISIS: Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, told EU leaders at an emergency summit this week that the EU must (i) secure its borders, and (ii) give more aid to the Middle East. He warned that the crisis is only just beginning as 12 million displaced Syrians are looking to Europe following Germany’s (short-lived) open door policy.
EU leaders criticise Angela Merkel’s open-door policy as irresponsibly creating a pull-effect. Hungary accused her and Germany of ‘moral imperialism.’ She is also facing criticism from within her own party and country.
The European Commission has begun legal action against 19 EU member states, including France and Germany, for failing to implement rules in handling asylum seekers coming to Europe.
President Hollande of France threatened Hungary with ejection from the EU for refusing to override the wishes of his electorate over compulsory migrant quotas. Slovakia is defying EU law by refusing to obey the compulsory quota. The Polish government has decided to obey the quota, in defiance of its country’s democratic wish, and so is sure to lose this month’s elections.
Hundreds of Iraqi immigrants have rejected Finland as a host, saying it is too cold and boring. French officials have offered to bring 1000 migrants to France by bus from Munich, but only 600 have accepted and 60 of those have already left France for more prosperous Belgium.
Cuts in the EU’s budget for 2016 agreed by national ministers in July have been over-ridden by the European parliament. A budget of €142.1 billion – a cut of €1.4 billion – had been agreed; however, the parliament has reversed the cut and increased the budget to €146.5 billion. This will take the UK’s annual contribution to over £12.5 billion, an increase of £384 million.
GERMANY: The emissions scandal has spread from Volkswagen to BMW and Mercedes Benz.
GREECE: Prime minister Tsipras’s attempts to form a coalition government with the right-wing Independent Greeks party stumbled when junior infrastructure minister Dimitris Kammenos was sacked, for being anti-semitic and homophobic, only hours after his appointment.
HOLLAND: A Eurosceptic petition opposing the EU’s planned ‘association’ treaty with Ukraine will lead to a referendum next April.
INDIA: The Indian Space Research Organisation has launched Astrosat, its first orbiting space observatory, plus six satellites.
IRAQ: Many soldiers are deserting the Iraqi army and heading for Europe as migrants, rather than defending their country against ISIS.
Russia, Iraq, Iran and Assad’s Syria have formed an anti-Isis intelligence cell based in Baghdad.
MALDIVES: An explosion on President Yameen’s speedboat injured his wife and two bodyguards. The president was unhurt.
MALAYSIA: Police have detained eight people, including four ethnic Chinese Uighurs, for questioning about the bombing of the Erawan shrine in Bangkok in August.
RUSSIA: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that Russia will take counter-measures if the US undertakes its planned upgrade of nuclear weapons in Germany.
Russian soldiers have been threatened with treason charges after questioning orders which apparently suggested they were going to fight in Syria.
The corpses of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife have been exhumed from the cathedral inside St Petersburg’s Peter and Paul fortress. The Orthodox church has backed a new criminal investigation into the deaths of the Russian royal family in 1918.
Russia has exchanged Eston Kohver, the Estonian sentenced last month to 15 years imprisonment for spying and who Estonia claimed was kidnapped and smuggled across the border into Russia, for Aleksei Dressen, an Estonian policeman convicted of spying for Russia.
SAUDI ARABIA: Over 700 pilgrims died and over 800 injured in a panic-stricken crowd which stampeded for over an hour during the procession from Mina to Mecca during the haj pilgrimage. 364 haj pilgrims were killed in a stampede at Mina in 2006; 251 haj pilgrims were killed in a stampede at Mina in 2004; 340 were killed in a fire in 1997; 1426 were killed in a stampede in 1990; over 400 were killed in a protest in 1987. 109 were killed in Mecca’s Grand Mosque itself by a collapsing crane last month.
King Salman in facing opposition from within the royal family. Two princes have written letters to other members of the royal family calling for his replacement, according to The Times.
SPAIN: This week’s elections in Catalonia’s regional parliament were seen as a referendum for Catalan independence. The pro-independence coalition of right and left wing parties, Together For Yes, won 62 seats out of 135; alliance with the left-wing pro-independence CUP, which won ten seats, would give it majority.
SWITZERLAND: Swiss authorities questioned the FIFA president Sepp Blatter and raided his offices. Michel Platini, the UEFA president and former aide to Blatter, was also questioned. Jerome Valcke, FIFA’s general secretary and Blatter’s adjutant, is also under investigation.
SYRIA: The US secretary of state John Kerry warned of the dangers of inadvertent clashes between US strikes against ISIS and Russian defence of the Assad regime. But Ash Carter, the US defence secretary, said that the USA would be willing to work with Russia to defeat ISIS. President Putin and President Obama met to discuss the crisis in Syria.
Speaking to the UN, President Putin urged the USA to co-operate with Russian attempts to stabilise Syria by supporting the government and fighting ISIS. He criticised the US backing of rebel groups as illegal. President Obama insisted that there can be no peace or stability in Syria while Assad remains in power.
Following the arrival of new weapons and planes from Russia, government forces attacked the city of Palmyra with barrel bombs over three days. At least 13 bombs damaged the 13th century citadel, a Unesco world heritage site. Raqqa and Aleppo also came under aerial attack. Rebel groups in Aleppo and Darayya have reported an increase in the frequency and accuracy of government airstrikes against them with new (presumably Russian) weapons and planes.
FRANCE: launched airstrikes in Syria for the first time, attacking an ISIS base as part of the US-led coalition.
UKRAINE: Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk is facing a criminal investigation over allegations of bribery and corruption, according to Sergei Kaplin, a member of President Poroshenko’s party.
USA: Pope Francis visited Washington to meet President Obama in the Whitehouse and to address Congress, the first Pope ever to do so. He also addressed the UN general assembly in New York, attended a multi-faith ceremony at Ground Zero, visited Central Park and celebrated Mass at Madison Square Gardens.
In advance of President Xi of China’s meeting with President Obama, there were suggestions that the US could impose sanctions against China for cybercrimes. It emerged that the details of 5.6 million US government employees – including their fingerprints – were stolen by Chinese hackers last June.
Republican John Boehner resigned as the Speaker of the House, apparently under pressure from the grass-roots of his party dissatisfied by what they see as ineffective opposition by its leaders in Congress to President Obama’s government.
