10 March 2016

Week in Brief: INTERNATIONAL

Europe

EU: At the EU summit in Brussels, Angela Merkel backed proposals to double the amount of EU funding from €3 billion to €6 billion to be given to Turkey and to grant its citizens the right to visa-free travel within the Schengen zone, in return for its help in managing the migrant crisis over the next three years.  Turkey is to stop the passage of migrants from its territory to Europe, and to set up more migrant centres from which the EU will accept refugees.  EU leaders postponed agreement on the deal, however; it will be considered again on 18 March at the next summit.

Naval operations involving Nato, the EU and Turkish coastguards to stop migrants crossing the Aegean are to start this week.

See comment ‘Turkey and the EU’.

FRANCE: President Hollande awarded the Légion d’Honneur to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. The award, which was not publicly announced, was criticised by human rights activists in France.

There is evidence that people-smugglers are opening new routes to Great Britain from Dunkirk rather than from Calais.

NATO: General Philip Breedlove, NATO’s European commander, accused Russia and the Assad regime of “deliberately weaponising migration in order to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve.”

RUSSIA: The nanny from Uzbekistan who was arrested at a metro station brandished the severed head of a murdered child and making terrorist threats is being investigated for links to extremist groups.  In a video which appeared on YouTube, she said that she wanted to avenge Russia’s bombing of Syria.  It was revealed that she has a history of mental health problems.

SPAIN: Princess Cristina, the sister of the King of Spain, appeared in court, facing two counts of tax fraud in connection with the charges of embezzlement against her husband.

 

Middle East and Africa

IRAQ: A raid by US Delta Force commandos captured a high-ranking Isis militant.

An Isis suicide bomber killed at least 60 people by driving a fuel truck into a checkpoint at Hallah, south of Baghdad.

ISRAEL: A Palestinian man stabbed 10 people in Jaffa.  He was then shot dead by police.  One of his victims – a tourist from the USA – died of his wounds.

MOZAMBIQUE: Plane debris suspected to be from Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which mysteriously disappeared off western Australia two years ago, has been washed up on the coast of Mozambique. A few days later another piece of debris suspected to be from MH370 was found on Réunion Island (the only confirmed piece of MH370 was found on Réunion last July).

SAUDI ARABIA: Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have declared Hezbollah, the Shia force based in Lebanon, to be a terrorist organisation.

SOMALIA: US officials announced that airstrikes destroyed an al-Shabaab training camp, killing at least 150 terrorists. The US military is supporting an African Union army fighting against al-Shabaab on behalf of the government in Mogadishu.

SYRIA: Peace talks in Geneva have been delayed until Thursday 11 March.  The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 135 people (32 of them civilians, including 7 children) had been killed in the first week of the current ceasefire.

TUNISIA: An attack on the town of Ben Gardane by dozens of heavily armed militants was beaten off by security forces. At least 53 people were killed (35 terrorists, 11 soldiers and 7 civilians). It is suspected that the militants were Isis jihadists from neighbouring Libya.

TURKEY: Two female militants armed with grenades and a machine gun attacked a police bus in Istanbul.  They were shot dead by police.  It’s thought they were members of the DHKP-C, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group.

The courts seized the newspaper ‘Zaman’, which is critical of President Erdogan and the ruling AKP party and has one of the largest circulations in the country.  Its editor and senior columnist were arrested.  Police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse protestors demonstrating outside its offices.  A court also seized the Cihan news agency, owned by the same proprietor as Zaman.

The TV news channel IMC was taken off air by the authorities, who alleged that it ‘spread terrorist propaganda’.

President Erdogan threatened to have two journalists re-arrested and charged as spies after the constitutional court ruled that they had been illegally arrested for reporting on the smuggling of weapons from Turkey to Isis.  The editor in chief and the Ankara bureau chief of ‘Cumhuriyet’, an opposition newspaper, will go on trial later this month, charged with publishing state secrets.  A court has just released them from jail, where they have been since their arrest three months ago.

Almost two thousand people have been charged with the offence of insulting the president since Erdogan came to power in 2014.

See comment ‘Turkey and the EU’.

YEMEN: Six gunmen (suspected Isis militants) attacked a care home run by Roman Catholic missionaries.  They killed 16 people (including nuns, nurses, patients and guards).  A priest is missing; officials say that the priest has been abducted.

Representatives of Saudi Arabia and Houthi forces began talks to discuss ways of ending the war between them.

ZIMBABWE: President Mugabe announced plans to nationalise all diamond mining companies operating in the country.

 

Asia, Far East & Pacific

CHINA: The Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi declared that the South China Sea islands were an integral part of China’s territory and that the Chinese should be prepared to defend them.  Five other countries in the region dispute China’s claims to the islands.  The Philippines have brought a case about them to the International Court of Arbitration, but China has refused to co-operate.  The USA has responded to Wang Yi’s statements by announcing the deployment of long range nuclear bombers to Australia.

NORTH KOREA: The USA imposed sanctions on certain officials and organisations in retaliation for North Korea’s recent testing of a nuclear device and launching of a long-range missile.  The UN – including China and Russia – also imposed sanctions and trade bans.  Kim Jong Un responded by ordering military to put nuclear arsenal on stand-by.

South Korea and the USA began their annual joint military exercises.  North Korea threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes against both countries.

PAKISTAN: A suicide bombing killed at least 13 people and injured 30 others in the town of Shabqadar.   A faction of the Taliban claimed that it was in revenge for the recent execution of the man who murdered the governor of the Punjab eight months ago for suggesting that Pakistan’s blasphemy laws should be reformed.  The murderer was seen as a hero by many Pakistanis; 100,000 people attended his funeral in Rawalpindi, and across the country many more demonstrated against his execution.

The murdered governor’s son, Shabaz Taseer, was rescued by police from captivity this week. He had been abducted more than four years ago.

 

America

BRAZIL: Former president Lula da Silva was arrested and questioned by police about allegations of bribery and corruption concerning a number of construction companies and the state-run energy supplier Petrobas.

Marcello Oderbrecht, the former head of the Oderbrecht construction group, has been sentenced to 19 years in jail for corruption and money laundering, in connection with contracts with Petrobas.

The Supreme Court ruled that the speaker of Congress’s lower house, Eduardo Cunha, should be tried on bribery charges.

HONDURAS: The activist Berta Caceres, a Lenca Indian who championed the rights of Honduras’ indigenous people, was murdered in her home.  She had recently complained of receiving death threats from landowners and security forces.

USA: In the Republican primaries, Ted Cruz won in Kansas, Maine and Idaho; Donald Trump won in Louisiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi and Hawai; and Marco Rubio won in Puerto Rico.  In the Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders won in Michigan and Hilary Clinton won in Mississippi. See comment ‘Nearing the Crest of the Wave’.

Ben Carson announced his withdrawal from the race for the Republican presidential nomination.  Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, announced that he would not be running for president.

Police have begun trial drone-surveillance of the citizens of an unspecified city.

Maria Sharapova, the Russian tennis star resident in Los Angeles, has been suspended by the International Tennis Federation after testing positive for the banned substance meldonium.

 

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