19 November 2015
Week In Brief: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
AFGHANISTAN: Seven people were wounded when presidential guards shot at protesters outside President Ghani’s official residence in Kabul. The protesters were marching about the abduction and murder of seven members of the Hazari Shia minority, and were reportedly trying to scale the palace walls.
Taliban forces have taken the town of Sangin in Helmand province after several days of fierce fighting. 88 Afghan soldiers were killed, military equipment including 5 armoured personnel carriers were captured, and at least 65 soldiers including 5 officers defected to the Taliban. Sangin was taken from the Taliban in 2006 by the British troops at the cost of nine lives, and defended at the cost of hundreds.
BURMA: President Thein Sein, the former junta general, accepted defeat in the election and promised to hand power over to the victorious National League For Democracy. Results are still coming in, but a landslide victory for Aung San Suu Kyi’s party is certain.
EU: Brussels ruled that goods from Israeli settlements on the West Bank must be labelled as such. Palestinian groups welcomed the decision. The Israeli government called it discriminatory and hypocritical, and said that they will take legal action against the EU.
The summit in Malta between EU leaders and African leaders, intended to set up a system for returning migrants to Africa, failed.
Due to the failure of the EU’s external borders, EU members including Sweden and Slovenia are erecting internal borders in defiance of the Schengen agreement. Denmark may follow their example.
FRANCE: 129 people were murdered and more than 400 wounded (42 of them critically) in Paris on Friday by terrorists attacking a rock concert, the Stade de France, four restaurants, a bar and a café with suicide bombs and automatic weapons. Security forces believe that there were eight or nine terrorists in three teams; seven are dead and police are searching for an eighth, a Belgian of Arab descent. At least three of the terrorists were French, and there is evidence to suggest that another of them may have entered Europe through Greece with Syrian refugees. A state of emergency to last 3 months has been declared in France and over 100 people have been detained under emergency powers. Seven arrests have been made by Belgian police. Isis has claimed responsibility.
The hunt for the man thought to be the attack’s planner, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian of Moroccan descent, has resulted in a seven hour police raid on a Paris flat. Seven arrests were made, one man was shot dead and a woman killed herself with a bomb.
France has declared war against Isis and has invoked article 42 of the Lisbon Treaty. This is the EU’s mutual defence clause, putting all other EU countries under an “obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power”, and has never been used before. President Hollande has received offers of intelligence and military aid for the fight against Isis in the Middle East from Russia and from Britain among others.
11 people were killed and 37 injured (12 critically) when a train undertaking high-speed trials came off the rails and crashed near Strasbourg.
GERMANY: A football match between Germany and Holland in Hanover on Tuesday was cancelled at the last minute because there was evidence of a plot to bomb the stadium.
GREECE: A general strike brought much of Greece to a halt. It was organised by the country’s two biggest unions as a protest against the latest budget cuts, and it was supported by the Syriza government which made those cuts, which they said they wouldn’t make.
A magnitude 6.4 undersea earthquake killed two people and caused landslides on the island of Lefkada.
IRAQ: Kurdish forces, supported by US and British special forces and air-strikes, have begun an assault on the Isis-held town of Sinjar.
ISRAEL: A score of Israeli commandos snatched a Palestinian and killed another in a raid on a hospital in Hebron, the West Bank. The arrested man is accused of recently stabbing an Israeli settler. The man shot dead was his brother.
JAPAN: A 6.7 magnitude undersea earthquake was recorded off the Ryukyu Islands at the south of the Japanese island chain.
KENYA: A report by Journalists For Justice has accused the Kenyan army of running a sugar-smuggling racket worth $400 million a year in southern Somalia. Al-Shabaab, the army’s target, also benefits from the racket by taxing the sugar as it passes through their territory.
KOSOVO: Recent deals between the government and Serbia and Montenegro to help Kosovo’s ethnic Serb minority triggered protest inside parliament (opposition ministers fired off tear gas and pepper sprays) and outside (demonstrators threw rocks and paint at police).
LEBANON: Two suicide bombers killed at least 44 people in Beirut. The bombs were detonated in a Shia area which is a Hezbollah power-base. Nine people (7 Syrians and 2 Lebanese) have been arrested. Isis has claimed responsibility.
LIBYA: In the first attack by the US on Isis in Libya, American F-15 jets killed Abu Nabil, the Iraqi-born leader of Isis in Libya.
PAKISTAN: At least 12 people were killed and 100 injured when brake failure derailed a train near Quetta.
The militant group Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), illegal in Pakistan and considered a terrorist organisation in the West, is leading earthquake relief in northern Pakistan after last month’s 7.5 magnitude quake. JuD is considered to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba which is believed to be behind the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks which killed 166 people.
PORTUGAL: Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho has called for an early election following the collapse of his government last week after an alliance of the Socialist party with two left-wing parties won a vote of no confidence. His call is being criticised as unconstitutional; elections cannot be held within six months of each other, and the last was on October 4. President Cavaco Silva has not yet asked the Socialists and their allies to form a government. The political uncertainty, on top of fears that a Socialist/Communist/Left Bloc government might reverse the fiscal reforms agreed with creditors after the €78 billion international bailout, is damaging the country’s economy.
RUSSIA: The Kremlin flashed its big weapon to the world when “secret” plans of a powerful submarine nuclear torpedo were “accidentally” shown on television.
Russia has been suspended from international athletics.
President Putin has offered France a military alliance against Isis, in the wake of the bombing of the Russian passenger plane in Egypt and the attacks in Paris.
SAUDI ARABIA: Karl Andree, the British citizen who was sentenced to twelve months in prison and 350 lashes for alcohol offences, was released unlashed after fifteen months in prison.
Amnesty International has called on the UK government to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen where at least 2000 civilians have been killed in the war.
SOUTH AFRICA: Eight policemen have been sentenced to 15 years in prison for killing a Mozambiquan taxi driver who they tied to the back of their van, dragged along the street, and beat up in the police station. The taxi driver had apparently sworn at the policemen when they’d asked him to move his vehicle.
SPAIN: Arturo Mas, the Catalonian independence leader, lost his bid to be re-elected as head of the Catalonia regional parliament. He was opposed by the far left CUP party which disagrees with his cuts in public services and is concerned by accusations of corruption made against his Democratic Convergence party.
The Madrid government has launched a legal challenge against the Catalan campaign for independence.
SYRIA: The UN announced a peace plan agreed by the 19 foreign ministers meeting at Vienna. Talks are to start in January between the Syrian government and opposition groups; a transitional government should be established within six months; and UN monitored elections should take place within 18 months. Russia and the US continue to disagree about Assad’s future.
Mohammed Emwazi, the Kuwaiti-born Isis propagandist and murderer known as ‘Jihadi John’, has been killed in a drone strike in Raqqa, according to the Pentagon.
Russian and French airstrikes against Isis have intensified following the recent terrorist attacks against both of them. Russia is using cruise missiles and long-range bombers.
Russian planes have been bombing civilians with white phosphorus, according to witnesses in the villages of Horsh (where they reported that burns killed 4 civilians and injured 14 others) and Benin. The use of white phosphorous in civilian areas is illegal under international law.
TURKEY: At the G20 summit, President Putin had meetings about Syria with President Obama and with Prime Minister Cameron. The Russian president announced that Russia was prepared to communicate and co-operate with Syrian opposition groups in the fight against Isis.
UKRAINE: Parliament rejected a gay rights bill. Without laws banning discrimination and guaranteeing equal rights, Ukraine cannot be considered for EU membership.
USA: Congress passed legislation giving mineral rights on asteroids to whoever mines them. There are millions of asteroids in the inner solar system, and they are rich with minerals and metals. Experts say that an asteroid-mining industry is less than a decade away.
President Obama has begun a six day tour of Asia with promise of military and economic aid to countries threatened by Chinese militarisation of the seas.
The latest round of televised debates between the Presidential nominees saw Donald Trump losing ground in the Republican race and Hilary Clinton losing ground in the Democrat race. The Republican favourite, Marco Rubio, announced that a departure of the UK from the EU would not affect its relationship with the USA.
VENEZUELA: Two nephews of the wife of President Maduro have been extradited from Haiti to the USA on charges of drug smuggling. Later this week, police raided a house owned by one of the nephews in the Dominican Republic and found more than 300lb of cocaine and heroin. The USA claims that several Venezuelan government figures, including the parliamentary speaker, have been involved in drug smuggling. The government is likely to suffer a defeat in next month’s elections.
