07 April 2016
Week In Brief: International
Europe
AUSTRIA: Austria is preparing to block its Alpine border with Italy in anticipation of migrants coming up through Italy as the Balkan route into Europe closes.
BELGIUM: Brussels airport reopened after the recent terrorist attacks, with flights to Portugal, Greece and Italy.
There were violent clashes between police, far-right demonstrators, anti-racist protestors and locals in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek. A woman was seriously injured by a speeding car which had driven through a police cordon.
EU: A judge sitting in the European Court of Justice has revealed that the ECJ misled the public by claiming that it needed more judges to deal with the backlog of cases. As a result, the commission doubled the number of judges. The Belgian judge attacked the extra money and expense involved, especially as, he said, the backlog had been cleared.
FRANCE: President Hollande has abandoned the two reforms he announced in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks: to empower judges to deprive French terrorists of French citizenship if they have dual nationality; and to empower the government to declare a state of emergency when national security is threatened. He has insufficient support to achieve a parliamentary majority.
Violent protests broke out and schools were closed across the country as demonstrators marched against Hollande’s proposed reforms of France’s labour laws. Unions claimed that over a million workers, students and school pupils joined the protest. The government is trying to combat the country’s high level of unemployment and to energise its sluggish economy; its opponents are defending workers’ rights.
The head of SNCF, the state railways, announced that trains will be patrolled by armed security officers in plain clothes authorised to shoot terrorists, and that trained ‘profilers’ will patrol stations to spot suspicious behaviour and search luggage.
Wine producers blocked a motorway from Spain, stopped lorries carrying Spanish wine into the country and emptied their cargo onto the road. They were protesting about the import of cheap boxed wine. France and Spain are both members of the EU, which supports the free movement of goods and people by law.
GREECE: The new EU plan to return migrants to Turkey began this week. Only 202 economic migrants, mostly from Afghanistan and Pakistan, were ferried back to Turkey; 500 should have been flown back on the first day. So far the execution of the plan appears chaotic and confused, among reports that neither Greece, Turkey nor EU personnel are ready for it. Migrants continue to cross the Aegean from Turkey to Greece in large numbers.
ICELAND: Prime minister Sigurdur David Gunnlaugsson resigned, following revelations that his wife has a Panamanian off-shore company which has claims against Iceland’s collapsed banks. (See ‘Panama’ below.)
NETHERLANDS: Voters are taking part in a referendum to approve the trade association agreed between the EU and Ukraine (the association which triggered the current crisis in Ukraine). Many are expected to vote against the association as a protest against the EU’s democratic deficit. The association has already come into force.
RUSSIA: Hundreds of firefighters were called to a defence ministry building in central Moscow as an inferno swept through it.
SPAIN: The caretaker prime minister Mariano Rajoy proposed a law to abolish the siesta, and a change to Greenwich Mean Time. Attempts to form a coalition government following last December’s election have failed, so there will be a fresh election in June.
Middle East and Africa
IRAQ: Government sources reported that their soldiers have fought their way into the Isis-held town of Hit.
LIBYA: An increase in migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Italy is already evident as the EU attempts to stop the route into Europe from Turkey to Greece. 18,000 migrants have crossed from Libya so far this year, almost twice the number for the same period last year.
Fayez al-Sarraj, the prime minister designate of the UN-backed unity government arrived in Tripoli. It remains to be seen whether his government of national unity will be accepted by the two competing governments already in power in Libya.
SAUDI ARABIA: It has been claimed that Prince Sultan bin Turki, who was apparently going to uncover corruption among Saudi Government officials, has disappeared. It is thought that he has been abducted and is being held under house arrest in Riyadh.
SOUTH AFRICA: The Constitutional Court ruled that President Zuma has breached the constitution, as he has not yet obeyed the demand to return some of the missing state funds said to have been spent on his home. Parliament debated a motion to impeach him but he survived the vote thanks to ANC’s big majority.
SYRIA: Syrian Kurds launched a huge assault on Azaz, a town near the Turkish border.
Regime forces, backed by Russian airforce, recaptured the town of Al Qaryatayn from Isis.
The Pentagon reported that at least twenty jihadists, including seven high-ranking officers, were killed in an airstrike on a stronghold of the Nusra Front (a jihadist group linked to al-Qaeda) in Idlib province.
Nusra Front claims to have shot down a Syrian warplane near Aleppo.
TURKEY: The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights reported that at least 16 refugees trying to cross the border from Syria have been shot dead by Turkish border guards.
Amnesty International reported that thousands of Syrian refugees have been bussed back over the border into Syria.
A car bomb targetted an armoured police transporter in Diyarbakir, in the Kurdish region of Turkey, killing 7 policemen and injuring 27 other people (including 13 policemen). Kurdish separatists are suspected.
Hackers claim to have published personal details of about 50 million Turkish citizens on line. This would be the biggest ever leak of this kind.
YEMEN: A UN-brokered cease-fire between the forces backing President Hadi and the Houthi rebels is due to start next week. The President sacked his prime minister and vice-president, Khaled Bahah.
Far East, Asia, Pacific
AZERBAIJAN: Armed conflict broke out between the Azerbaijan army and the Armenia army in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is in western Azerbaijan but has been controlled by Armenia since the previous conflict over it ended in 1994.
BURMA: 50 years of military rule came to an end as a new president, 2 vice-presidents and 18 cabinet ministers were sworn in. Aung San Suu Kyi became foreign minister and is also the head of three other ministries.
INDIA: A flyover under construction collapsed in a crowded Calcutta suburb, killing at least 21 people.
NORTH KOREA: South Korean planes and ships were jammed when North Korea blocked GPS signals, apparently in retaliation to a meeting of US, Chinese, South Korean and Japanese leaders in Washington to agree on sanctions against North Korea.
PAKISTAN: At least 36 people were killed when torrential rain and floods hit the northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
THAILAND: Police and soldiers seized 5,800 red plastic bowls distributed at a festival in Chiang Mai. A greeting from the democratically elected prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed two years ago by a military junta which now governs the country, is printed on them; red is the colour of his party. A woman holding one of the bowls in a photograph on Facebook has been charged with sedition.
America
CHILE: The head of the anti-corruption watchdog Transparent Chile, Gonzalo Delaveau, resigned after the leaked Mossack Fonseca papers (see ‘Panama’ below) revealed that he was associated with a number of off-shore tax-avoidance accounts.
PANAMA: 11.5 million documents leaked from the law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed details about those taking advantage of the country’s off-shore tax havens. Those involved in tax avoidance schemes included 12 acting or former world leaders, 17 ‘relatives or associates’ of world leaders, and a number of known criminals. (See also ‘Iceland’ and ‘Chile’ above and comment article.)
USA: In the Wisconsin primaries, Cruz beat Trump for the Republicans, and Sanders beat Clinton for the Democrats.
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