15 October 2015

Week In Brief: INTERNATIONAL NEWS

AUSTRIA:  The anti-immigration far-right Freedom Party gained 31% of the vote in the election for Vienna’s mayor.  The Social Democrat’s Michael Häupl was re-elected with 39% of the vote.

BELARUS:  President Lukashenko was elected for a fifth term, winning 80% of the vote in the presidential election.  Liberal opposition boycotted the election, having reportedly been harassed, beaten and imprisoned.

BRASIL:  President Dilma Rousseff is to be investigated by an electoral court on accusations of bribery in connection with the Petrobas scandal.

CHINA:  A display of the Magna Carta in Beijing has been cancelled at the last minute.

FIFA:  Fifa’s ethics committee has suspended President Sepp Blatter, Vice-president Michel Platini and secretary general Jerome Valcke, all of whom are facing allegations of corruption.  It gave Sepp Blatter a 90-day ban from football, which is likely to be extended by 45 days so that its expiry coincides with the date of his retirement.

FRANCE:  Several days of industrial unrest, strikes and protests included a day of non-cooperation by commuters with rail passengers refusing to show tickets in protest against bad service.

ICELAND:  Iceland has repaid its loan to the IMF ahead of schedule.  Iceland borrowed about $2.1 billion when its economy collapsed in 2008.

IRAN:  A court in Tehran has tried and convicted journalist Jason Rezaian, the Iran correspondent of ‘The Washington Post’, behind closed doors on charges which include plotting with the US to overthrow the regime.

IRAQ:  The interior ministry claims that an Iraqi air-strike hit an Isis convoy carrying senior figures including its supreme leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

An RAF helicopter crashed in Kabul, killing five people (including the two British airmen) and injuring five others.

ISRAEL:  Violence continues with more random stabbings of Israelis by Palestinians in Jerusalem, and with stone-throwing protests and petrol bomb attacks against police and military elsewhere in Israel and the West Bank.  Seven Israelis have been killed and more than 50 wounded by Palestinian attacks in the last month; 17 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1400 wounded by the Israeli army.  Two rockets were fired from Gaza towards Israel, and Israel responded by bombing two Hamas targets (in which a pregnant woman and her daughter were killed).  There are concerns that the violence could escalate into a new ‘intifada’ (Palestinian uprising); many Palestinians are disillusioned by the lack of progress made by their Fata leaders in negotiations with Israel, and are resorting to the kind of militant actions favoured by Hamas, Fata’s rival.

ITALY:  The mayor of Rome, Ignazio Marino, resigned over a scandal involving his credit card expenses and accusations about the misuse of city funds

RUSSIA:  The FSB, Russia’s security service, claims to have prevented a terrorist attack on Moscow’s public transport system by arresting a number of people it says were trained by Isis in Syria.

SAUDI ARABIA:  The Associated Press has calculated that at least 1453 people were killed in the stampede outside Mecca during last month’s haj (the official figures are 769 killed and 934 injured).

An Indian housemaid has accused her Saudi employers of abuse and torture, and of chopping off her arm when she was escaping from them.

A Saudi Arabian prince, bailed to appear in a Los Angeles court accused of abusing and assaulting three women kept prisoner in his rented Beverly Hills mansion, is thought to have fled back to Saudi Arabia.

Karl Andree, a 74 year old British citizen resident in Saudi Arabia for the past 25 years, is still in prison 15 months after he was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment for his home-made wine. His sentence also includes 350 lashes, which have yet to be administered.

SOUTH AFRICA:  President Zuma has withdrawn South Africa from the International Criminal Court.

SYRIA:  Russia fired 26 cruise missiles at anti-Assad groups in Syria from warships in the Caspian Sea nine hundred miles away.  There are reports that at least four of the missiles fell short and hit Iran (Russia’s ally) by mistake.

Russian artillery, helicopter gunships and warplanes are supporting a ground offensive by Assad’s troops (and Iranian-backed Shia militias such as Hezbollah) against western-backed rebels who are threatening Assad’s Mediterranean heartland.

Russia’s attack on anti-government groups has enabled Isis to take ground from them and advance towards Aleppo, putting US and Turkish plans for a safe-haven in northern Syria in jeopardy.

The USA announced a new initiative to train and help rebels and Kurds in the north of Syria to fight Isis. It dropped 50 tonnes of weapons and ammunition to the Syrian Arab Coalition, a group of moderate rebels.

TUNISIA:  The National Dialogue Quartet, four groups which worked together to turn Tunisia away from civil war and towards peace and democracy following the Arab Spring, has been awarded the Nobel peace prize.

TURKEY:  At least 97 people were killed in a bomb attack on a rally in Ankara promoting peace between Kurds and other Turks.  No one has yet claimed responsibility, although Isis is the main suspect.

The militant Kurdish group, the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), announced a cease-fire in its conflict against Turkish troops until next month’s re-run of the inconclusive June general elections.

UKRAINE:  Flight MH17, the Malaysia Airlines passenger plane shot down over Ukraine last year killing all 298 people on board, was brought down by a Russian Buk missile fired from territory held by pro-Russian rebels, according to the final report of the Dutch Safety Board.

USA:  The governor of California has outlawed the use of drones by paparazzi to invade the privacy of celebrities.

Floods have killed 15 people in South Carolina and two in North Carolina.

Spencer Stone, one of the Americans who overcame the Islamist terrorist on the Amsterdam to Paris train two months ago, was stabbed repeatedly outside a bar in Sacramento. He was reportedly protecting a woman from harassment. He is in a serious but stable condition.

The Republican Party is having trouble finding a speaker of the House of Representatives (a position third in line to the president) to replace John Boehner, who it is forcing to stand down at the end of the month. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican congressman from California who was expected to fill the vacancy, has withdrawn (amidst allegations of an extra-marital affair with a Republican congresswoman).

An 18 year old student shot another student dead and injured three others at the Northern Arizona University. He was arrested.