08 October 2015
Week in Brief:INTERNATIONAL
AFGHANISTAN: US airstrikes, and US and British special forces are helping the Afghan army to retake Kunduz from the Taliban. The city fell in hours last week; the governor, senior commanders and thousands of Afghan troops fled as 1,500 Taliban troops (out-numbered by several to one) attacked. The US has spent $65 billion training and equipping Afghan security forces since 2008. A US airstrike hit a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital by mistake – 22 hospital staff and patients were killed.
BRAZIL: Five police officers have been arrested in Rio de Janeiro after shooting a teenager dead: mobile phone footage taken by a resident of the boy’s favela shows one of the officers firing a gun and putting it in the dead victim’s hand; another resident says that the youth had surrendered before he was shot.
Brasil’s economic troubles have forced the organisers of next year’s Rio de Janeiro Olympic games to cut its budget by a third.
CHINA: At least seventeen parcel bomb attacks have killed seven people and injured fifty in the city of Liuzhou.
ISRAEL: Violence has spread this week after two Israelis were stabbed to death in Jerusalem’s old city. Palestinians were then barred from the old city, triggering violent protests. A Palestinian gunman killed an Israeli couple. A Palestinian teenager was killed and another injured by Israeli troops during a protest in the occupied West Bank.
FIFA: Four of Fifa’s biggest sponsors – Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Visa and Anheuser-Busch InBev (brewer of Budweiser) – have demanded that Sepp Blatter step down immediately as president of Fifa.
FRANCE: A twenty-mile stretch of the Cote d’Azur has been hit by flash floods and declared a disaster zone. At least sixteen people have died and five are missing. Five hundred people have been evacuated from their homes.
Angry employees of Air France violently attacked managers and security guards at Charles de Gaulle airport. More than one hundred workers injured seven people, including the human resources manager who had to scale a tall metal barrier to escape the crowd who had ripped the clothes off his back. Air France is uncompetitive and its management is proposing redundancies and longer hours.
GUATEMALA: A mudslide buried a village outside Guatemala city. At least 86 people have been killed and 350 are still missing.
INDIA: A Muslim man has been beaten to death by a 100-strong mob because rumours said he had been eating beef from a stolen calf. His son was also beaten and is in a critical condition. Cows are sacred in Hindu, and the prime minister Narendra Modi’s BJP Hindu nationalist party has encouraged state courts to ban beef.
NIGERIA: The army has reported that at least 10 people were murdered and 39 wounded by 4 Boko Harem suicide bombers in Maiduguri, capital of Borno state.
PALESTINE: The Palestinian flag was raised outside the United Nations building for the first time. Palestine gained non-member observer status at the UN in 2012. Last month the general assembly voted by a majority to fly the flag (the UK and most other European countries abstained; the US and eight other countries opposed the measure).
PORTUGAL: The Portugal Ahead centre-right coalition won the general election with an austerity manifesto.
SAUDI ARABIA: The anonymous dissident prince who is calling for the King and heirs to be replaced in a palace coup claims that 80% of the royal family is behind him, and says they want to push “for freedom of speech, democracy, sharing decision-making.”
A week after the haj stampede, Saudi Arabia has given the tally of victims as 769 dead and 934 injured. This does not match the tally from 23 countries, which gives more than 990 dead and also suggests that as many as 600 have still not been accounted for (Saudi Arabia has given no figures for the missing).
SOUTH AFRICA: Up to 10,000 protestors marched through five cities, accusing President Zuma and the ANC of dishonesty and corruption.
King Dalindyebo, a nephew of Nelson Mandela, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for assaulting, kidnapping and burning down the homes of his subjects. The tribal leader was described as a “tyrannical and despotic king”, and the court said that “The victims of his reign of terror were the vulnerable rural poor.” He has been appealing against other convictions (manslaughter and obstructing justice) for the last six years.
Crime statistics showed that the murder rate in South Africa is five times that of the rest of the world and has risen by nearly five percent in the last year. The rate is 1 per 3000 people for the country as a whole, though in some communities it is 1 per 250. A murder takes place every half-hour. It is possible that the real figures are actually higher, as lack of trust in the police means that crime is under-reported.
SYRIA: Russian airstrikes hit targets in Syria after the Russian parliament unanimously passed a motion to authorise the use of Russian military abroad. The chief of staff Sergei Ivanov declared that Russian deployment in Syria will be confined to “air support for the Syrian forces in their struggle with Isis.” However, most strikes have been against anti-government rebel forces rather than against Isis. Russian airstrikes have been followed up by government artillery bombardments. Iranian ground troops fighting for Assad are massing for a suspected ground assault on rebel groups.
Saudi Arabia has said it will increase its help to rebel forces to counter the increase in Russian and Iranian help to government forces. Nusra Front have offered a bounty of £14,000 for the capture of any Russian soldier. Fighters from former Soviet states such as Uzbekistan and Chechnya are going to Syria to fight Assad.
Assad government aircraft are taking an aggressive attitude towards other aircraft in the region. A Russian fighter plane entered Turkish airspace and was intercepted by two Turkish aircraft; Russian warplanes locked radar on Turkish jets patrolling the Turkish side of border. Russia has sent anti-aircraft weaponry and surveillance-jamming equipment to Syria.
Isis has destroyed ancient Palmyra’s Triumphal Arch, built in AD193-211 for Emperor Septimus Severus.
TURKEY: President Urdogan had talks in Brussels about EU/Turkish co-operation over the migrant crisis and economic issues.
UNITED NATIONS: The Netherlands’ proposal for an international enquiry into possible war crimes in Yemen has been blocked by the UN human rights council. Saudi Arabia chairs the UN human rights council and leads the Sunni coalition in the war in Yemen.
USA: A 26 year old student went on a shooting spree at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, murdering nine other students and wounding more than twenty. The gunman killed himself when confronted by armed police.
