03 December 2015
Week in Brief: INTERNATIONAL
BANGLADESH: Gunmen attacked a Shia mosque in Shibganj during evening prayers, murdering one worshipper and wounding three others.
BELGIUM: Schools reopened and public transport resumed in Brussels, but some security measures remain in place. Police raids failed to find any weapons or the suspects Salah Abdeslam and Mohamed Abrini. Failures of security and intelligence in Belgium have been criticised by the French press.
The controversial comic Dieudonné M’bala M’bala has been sentenced to two months in prison and fined €9,000 for anti-semitic material judged to be incitement to hatred.
BURKINO FASO: The first presidential elections in nearly forty years were won by Roch Marc Kabore. An attempted coup by army officers associated with Blaise Compaoré (the president ousted a year ago after 27 years in power) failed last month. Mr Kabore was a prime minister under Mr Compaoré.
CHINA: An animal cloning factory, producing beef and dairy cattle, dogs and horses is to open where the chemical explosions killed over 150 people earlier this year. The EU parliament banned cloning animals for meat three months ago.
Guo Feixiong, a human rights activist detained since protesting peacefully against censorship in 2013, has been jailed for eight years for ‘gathering a crowd to disrupt order in a public place’ and ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’. Another activist was jailed for three years for taking part in the protest. A third was jailed for two and a half years for displaying banners demanding transparency about officials’ assets.
FRANCE: Police continue to make anti-terrorist arrests and raids under the new emergency powers. They claim that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the planner of the Paris attacks who was killed in the police raid on the flat in Saint Denis, was planning attacks in the business area La Défense the following week.
Foreign minister Laurent Fabius said on a radio broadcast that Assad-government troops should be included in a Syrian coalition to fight against Isis.
President Hollande met President Putin in Moscow, but failed to persuade him to join a broad coalition against Isis.
Prime minister Manuel Valls has called on Europe to close its borders, saying that it cannot take any more refugees.
154 heads of state attended the opening of the Paris climate summit, the 21st “Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change”. Thousands of green protesters defied the ban on demonstrations imposed after the recent terror attacks; 200 of them were arrested after violent confrontations with the police.
The Association of Mayors of France has told councils not to put up Nativity scenes in their town halls. A recent case in the Paris appeal court ruled that Christmas cribs, mangers and Nativity scenes were illegal under the 1905 law which established France as an officially secular country. Many mayors are defying the ban.
GERMANY: Germany has answered France’s request for help in the fight against Isis in the Syria by promising to send six Tornado reconnaissance jets, refuelling planes, a frigate and 1,200 personnel to the Middle East.
Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” will be republished next month in Germany for the first time since World War II. The copyright-holder Bavaria banned publication, but the 70 year old copyright is about to expire.
IRAQ: Six mass graves holding the bodies of hundreds of murdered Yazidis have reportedly been found in the area around Sinjar since Kurdish forces recaptured the town from Isis last month. At least one of them is thought to be booby-trapped with bombs.
ISRAEL: Two Israeli teenagers were found guilty of the murder of a Palestinian youth whose abduction and killing set off a week of riots last year.
Israel and Jordan announced a joint £500 million scheme to build a 180km water pipeline from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea along the border between the two countries, for irrigation and to replenish the shrinking Dead Sea.
ITALY: Ciro Moccia, a pastamaker from Grignano (near Naples) who refused to pay protection money to the mafia, was attacked by a gunman who fired twelve shots at his legs.
JAPAN: A Japanese whaling fleet has defied the UN ban on whale hunting.
KENYA: Pope Francis began his tour of Africa by attacking the corruption and tyranny of the continent’s leaders. Kenya’s deputy president William Ruto is on trial at the International Criminal Court in the Hague for crimes against humanity. Last week, allegations of corruption against his cabinet forced President Kenyatta to sack ministers.
A woman died and at least thirty were injured at Strathmore University, Nairobi, fleeing to safety from the sound of gunfire and explosions; the police were staging a dummy terrorist attack as a drill without telling staff or students at the university.
INDONESIA: Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee reported that mechanical fault (cracked solder in a repair on the rudder) and pilot error were responsible for the crash of the AirAsia Airbus A320 last December.
LIBYA: It is feared that Isis is consolidating its hold on the town of Sirte and the surrounding area on the coast of Libya in an attempt to establish an alternative headquarters to Raqqa in Syria.
NIGERIA: A suicide bomber killed 21 people and wounded dozens in an attack on a Shia Moslem procession in Kano.
Former national security adviser Sambo Dasuki, former finance minister Bashir Yuguda and several other ministers have been arrested, following accusations of fraudulent arms deals worth $5.4 billion.
NORTH KOREA: South Korea reported that a North Korean submarine test-fired a ballistic missile off the north-eastern port of Wonsan. The test appears to have failed, as it wasn’t reported on North Korean media.
RUSSIA: The body of Oleg Peshkov, the pilot of the Russian Su-24 bomber, was returned to Russia from Syria via Ankara. President Putin demanded apology from President Erdogan for the attack on the plane, and accused Turkey (and Erdogan’s son Bilal) of buying oil from Isis. See comment article.
The navigator from the shot-down bomber was rescued, and insists that Turkey issued no warning and that they did not enter Turkish airspace. Turkey has published audio and video evidence which seems to prove that they did.
There were violent protests outside the Turkish embassy in Moscow. Russia suspended visa-free travel for Turks, and froze joint energy and investment projects. Tourism to Turkey has been cancelled by tour operators. Charter flights and package tours to Turkey have been banned. Russian companies are forbidden to employ Turks from Jan 1. Turkish delegates at an agricultural exhibition were deported for visa violations. Rospotrebnadzor, the state consumer protection agency, is removing Turkish food products from shops (a similar de facto ban on EU and USA food products has been in place for months).
SYRIA: Reports claim that Russia continues to drop cluster bombs on refugee camps and Turkmen villages near the Turkish border, and on non-Isis targets in Idlib province where most of the casualties were civilians.
Russia is to open a second airbase. The new airbase at al-Shayrat near Homs is further inland than the existing Hmeimim airbase near Latakia. Attack helicopters are already operating out of there, and engineers are preparing it for bombers and fighter jets.
TURKEY: President Erdogan refused to apologise to President Putin and said that he would do it again if there were further invasions of airspace. He denies buying oil from Isis (see comment article). Prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu threatened to help Azerbaijan to regain Nagorno-Karabakh, which Armenia controls with Russian help since the war of 1990.
A Kurdish human rights lawyer, Tahir Elci, was shot dead by police during a press conference. Tens of thousands of mourners attended his funeral in Diyabakir, and police used water canon and tear gas against demonstrators in Istanbul.
In a summit in Brussels to win Turkey’s help with the migrant crisis, EU leaders agreed to give Turkey €3 billion next year towards the cost of controlling and accommodating refugees, to allow Turkey’s 75 million citizens to travel to and in the EU without visas, and to reopen negotiations about Turkey becoming a member of the EU.
Five people were wounded when a pipe-bomb exploded near an underground station in Istanbul.
UKRAINE: Ukraine’s supply of oil from Russia has been cut off by Gazprom, the Russian state energy company. Russia accuses the Ukraine of failing to pay in advance; the Ukraine has legal claims against Russia for allegedly over-pricing supplies. Russia is also threatening to halt coal supplies to Ukraine.
USA: Protests were expected in Chicago as a video of a policeman shooting a black youth was released.
A gunman killed three people and wounded nine at an abortion clinic in Colorado.
A new law in New York city requires chain restaurants to print warning labels on menu items with a high salt content.
A hundred black evangelical preachers withdrew from an event with Donald Trump at Trump Tower. They pointed out that they had been invited just to meet him but his publicity claimed that they were attending to endorse him as a presidential candidate.
VATICAN CITY: Five people have gone on trial over the leaking of secrets. Two are journalists who are on trial accused of revealing the results of a Vatican committee whose task was to investigate corruption in the Curia. The other three are members of the committee who are alleged to have supplied the information.
VENEZUELA: A candidate for the opposition party Democratic Action was shot dead while campaigning for next week’s elections.
ZIMBABWE: President Xi of China visited Zimbabwe for talks with President Mugabe. It is thought that President Xi is encouraging Mugabe to step down and manage an orderly succession for the sake of stability.
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