14 January 2016
Week in Brief: INTERNATIONAL
AFGHANISTAN: Afghan forces in Sangin are still under siege by the Taliban. Reinforcements have not succeeded in breaking through to them. Fierce fighting is also taking place in Marjah district. The other twelve of Helmand province’s fourteen districts are already under Taliban control.
The Afghan airforce struck against Isis strongholds in the east of the country.
The Taliban have released Colin Rutherford, a Canadian tourist held captive for five years, following prolonged negotiations with Qatar.
CHINA: Stock trading was suspended at least twice to prevent market collapse. Stock markets around the world were adversely affected.
China has started to use an airstrip built on Fiery Cross Reef, one of seven artificial islands it has constructed in disputed waters of the South China Seas.
EGYPT: A group of fifteen men attacked a hotel in Cairo, firing flares and birdshot at a bus, tourists and security personnel. No one was injured. One arrest was made.
Two men armed with knives attacked tourists at Hurghada, a Red Sea resort. One was killed by police and the other wounded. Three tourists were injured.
FINLAND: Police and security guards reported an unprecedented level of allegations of sexual harassment on New Year’s Eve in Helsinki. About 1000 Iraqi asylum seekers had gathered at the central railway station.
FRANCE: A Syrian man wielding a knife and wearing a fake suicide vest was shot dead as he rushed at police officers in Paris on the first anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo murders. It later emerged that he had been living in a shelter for asylum seekers in Germany, and had been arrested in Cologne in 2014 for sexually abusing women.
The New Jungle – the migrants’ makeshift and unofficial camp at Calais – is to be transformed into an officially recognised centre with hard shelters, beds, heating and toilet facilities.
GERMANY: Four young Syrian men have been arrested over a double rape on New Year’s Eve. The police have identified 32 suspects concerning the New Year’s Eve mob violence; 22 of them are asylum seekers. It is claimed that the Cologne police chief concealed the level of the disorder and the involvement of migrants. He has been suspended.
The first new edition of ‘Mein Kampf’ published in Germany since Hitler’s death immediately sold out.
IRAN: The US navy claimed that a Revolutionary Guard ship fired unguided rockets close to the aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman in the Gulf on Boxing Day. This week ten US sailors and their vessel were seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the Gulf.
IRAQ: Isis suicide attackers killed over 18 people in a Baghdad shopping centre.
US planes bombed a bank in Mosul, destroying millions of dollars of Isis cash, according to US officials.
ITALY: A Tunisian and a Syrian have gone on trial charged with manslaughter and shipwreck, following the migrant boat disaster last April in which 800 people drowned.
LIBYA: Ten deaths were reported as Isis fought for oil export terminals in Sidra and Ras Lanuf.
Two suicide bombers killed 60 police recruits and wounded 200 others when they drove a tanker filled with explosives into the crowded main courtyard of a police academy in Zliten during a graduation ceremony.
MEXICO: Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, head of the powerful Sinaloa drugs cartel, was recaptured by Mexican marines seven months after escaping from a top security prison by motorbike through a tunnel. He also escaped from prison in 2001, hidden in a laundry basket. Proceedings to extradite him to the USA have begun.
NIGERIA: Former defence minister Haliru Mohamed was charged with laundering £1 million on behalf of former national security advisor Sambo Dasuko, who is accused of stealing $2 billion from funds intended to equip troops fighting Boko Harem.
SAUDI ARABIA: Amnesty International has reported that Samar Badawi, the sister of the jailed blogger Raif Badawi, has been arrested following a Twitter campaign for the release of her husband, jailed activist Waleed Abulkhair.
SOUTH KOREA: South Korea has resumed its loud-speaker propaganda broadcasts across the border into North Korea, following last week’s nuclear tests by North Korea.
SPAIN: Princess Cristina, the sister of King Felipe VI, appeared in court accused of being an accessory to her husband who is facing charges of embezzlement and tax evasion.
SYRIA: An aid convoy finally entered the town of Madaya, where 40,000 people under siege from Assad forces were facing starvation.
An Isis militant shot his mother dead in public in the city of Raqqa, according to activists from Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently. She was an Alawite Shia, seen as an infidel by the extreme Sunni Isis. She married a Sunni, and their children were brought up as Sunnis.
The RAF used Brimstone missiles against Isis targets for the first time.
Russian airstrikes are allegedly supporting Assad-regime forces in new attacks on Southern Front alliance rebel forces in the south west of the country.
TURKEY: A suicide bomber killed ten tourists and injured fifteen others in Sultanahmet Square in central Istanbul.
USA: A catastrophic methane gas leak from a ruptured underground storage well has led to school closures, health problems and the evacuation of more than 2000 families from the Porter Ranch neighbourhood of Los Angeles.
The Pentagon is planning to upgrade its nuclear arsenal with smaller but more precise bombs.
A man in Cincinnati shot his teenage son dead. Apparently the youth had returned home from school unexpectedly and the father thought he was an intruder.
