29 Setember 2016
Week In Brief: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Europe
BOSNIA: The Serbian half of Bosnia held a referendum on Saturday about keeping Jan 9 as its national day. The Bosnian Constitutional court has ruled it illegal – the Bosnian Serb declaration of independence on 9 Jan 1992 triggered the three year Balkan war. The EU has just accepted Bosnia’s application for membership.
FRANCE: Two Belgian policemen were arrested for driving 13 illegal immigrants, who had left a French lorry at Ypres, back across the French border in a police van. The French interior minister summoned Belgium’s ambassador to explain the incident. Police unions in Belgium have protested against the arrests and have threatened industrial action.
HUNGARY: A referendum about EU migrant quotas is to be held this weekend. The EU has told Hungary to accept 1,294 refugees. Viktor Orban’s government is defying the EU and running an anti-immigrant campaign.
ITALY: Rome’s new Five Star Movement mayor has cancelled the city’s bid for the 2024 Olympics, saying that Rome is still paying off debts from the 1960 Rome Olympics. Boston and Hamburg have also cancelled their bid. Los Angeles and Paris remain.
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has postponed the referendum about his proposed reforms to the Senate (Italy’s upper house) from October to December. He has said he will resign if he loses the vote.
UKRAINE: Gennady Tsypkalov, the former prime minister of the breakaway pro-Russian state of Luhansk, has died under mysterious circumstances. He was arrested last week for allegedly plotting a coup against Luhansk’s present leader, Igor Plotnitsky.
Middle East and Africa
EGYPT: A boat packed with migrants capsized off Rosetta; 300 of the 500 passengers are feared drowned.
The diplomatic row with France over the EgyptAir crash continues; France complained of delays in returning the bodies of victims, and claimed that Egypt is pushing for a terrorism cause, which would blame France (the plane was loaded/boarded in France).
IRAN: Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khomenei has banned women from cycling.
IRAQ: Isis is reportedly stock-piling chemical weapons for the defence of Mosul, Iraq’s second city. Its forces in northern Iraq have been using rockets armed with mustard gas. Coalition air forces (including the UK’s) are bombing Isis positions in Mosul, and have dropped millions of leaflets warning inhabitants of the approaching attack. The nearby town of Shirqat was taken from Isis.
An Isis suicide bomber killed six people and wounded 18 others in Baghdad. An Isis bomb and gun attack killed 12 people in Tikrit.
JORDAN: A writer who was about to stand trial for insulting religion (he had posted an anti-Isis cartoon on Facebook) was shot dead outside the courthouse. An imam has been arrested. The writer was a secularist from a Christian family.
LIBYA: An oil tanker left the port of Ras Lanuf for Italy, the first shipment of oil since the civil war broke out over two years ago. The port was seized from the UN-backed government of national accord last week by forces loyal to the rival eastern parliament.
SOUTH AFRICA: At least 31 students were arrested outside Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, as protests against tuition fees became violent. Rioting is spreading to universities across the country.
SYRIA: Washington blamed Moscow for last week’s attack on aid convoy. John Kerry called for grounding of all aircraft in Syria. Russia is sending an aircraft carrier to region. Fierce fighting continues in Aleppo. Three nurses and two ambulance drivers from International Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations charity were killed by bombing. Three hospitals were hit, as were three of the White Helmet’s four rescue centres and one of the city’s two water distribution plants as Russia and regime forces unleashed the heaviest bombardment in months on rebel-held areas of Aleppo. Planes dropped napalm, phosphorous and bunker-busting bombs in what is suspected to be preparation for a ground assault. There were 150 airstrikes in 72 hours. USA and western countries including the UK and France condemned Russia and Syria for the escalation at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
The UN is ready to resume aid convoys to besieged towns, following last week’s suspension.
TURKEY: A roadside bombing by the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) killed two security officers and wounded eight others in Mardin, south east Turkey.
Far East, Asia and Pacific
AFGHANISTAN: The government has signed a controversial peace deal with a warlord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is listed as a terrorist by the UN and the US because his Hezb-i-Islami militia has been responsible for the deaths of aid workers, civilians and western troops.
CHINA: China announced a National Gene Bank, to be located near Shenzen, which will contain genetic information of millions of Chinese people.
INDIA: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is threatening to block water supplies to Pakistan, in retaliation for the recent attack on an Indian army base in Kashmir in which 18 Indian soldiers were killed. Modi blamed Pakistan for the attack and condemned Pakistan as a terrorist state.
JAPAN: Japan announced that it would take part in joint naval patrols with the US in disputed waters of the South China Sea. China then flew more than forty air force planes over the Miyako Strait between the Japanese islands of Miyako and Okinawa. Japan and China dispute territory in the East China Sea.
America
BRAZIL: Prosecutors are to begin investigations into allegations that the new president, Michel Temer, is connected to the Petrobas state oil company corruption scandal.
USA: Rioting continues in Charlotte, North Carolina, in protest against police shooting an apparently disabled black man dead in his car. A state of emergency and a curfew has been declared. There were also protests in Tulsa, Oklahoma, against police shooting dead a black pastor – a police officer has been charged with manslaughter.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture was opened by President Obama in Washington DC. It is the Smithsonian’s nineteenth museum.
Five people were shot dead in a department store in Burlington, Washington State. A Turkish immigrant has been arrested.
The live TV debate between Trump and Clinton last Monday was watched by a record 84 million people in the US.
VENEZUELA: The national election committee has said that no referendum on the future of President Maduro can take place this year, thus avoiding the possibility of a general election. The opposition has organised a petition triggering a referendum; if the president loses a referendum this year, there will be an election, but if he loses it next year he will simply be replaced by his vice-president. The decision is likely to provoke widespread protest.
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