09 February 2017
Week In Brief: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Europe
FRANCE: An Egyptian wielding two machetes attacked a patrol of anti-terrorist soldiers in the Louvre. He was shot by one of the soldiers and is in hospital.
New allegations by Le Canard Enchaîné claim that Francois Fillon’s wife received excessive redundancy pay when contracts as parliamentary assistant ended in 2002 and 2013.
Former Republican leader Nicolas Sarkozy has been ordered to stand trial on fraud charges connected to campaign spending.
GREECE: Tension with Turkey continues, with Turkish military aircraft flying over the central and southern Aegean.
The IMF reported that the current bailout scheme is not working and warned that Greece will fall out of the Eurozone unless a new austerity package is implemented or debts are cancelled.
NETHERLANDS: The government announced that votes will be counted by hand in next month’s elections, as the vote-counting software may be vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
NORWAY: The foreign ministry announced that the army and security services have come under cyber-attack by hackers with suspected links to Russia.
ROMANIA: The new coalition government side-stepped parliament to pass a bill decriminalising official misconduct involving less than £37,000, an apparently pro-corruption measure which prompted President Iohannis to call for “a day of mourning for the rule of law”. The business minister resigned in protest; hundreds of thousands of protestors demonstrating against the measure have clashed with riot police; the government’s independent ombudsman has protested, saying it would put “almost all the public administration” above the law. Legal challenges were prepared by the president and the prosecutor-general, and bill was repealed. But protests continue, and protesters are now demanding the resignation of the government.
RUSSIA: Vladimir Kara-Murza, an opposition activist, critic of the government and ally of Boris Nemtsov before his murder, suffered kidney failure and is in intensive care. His wife has sent samples of his blood and hair to a private clinic in Israel for testing, and says that has been poisoned by an unknown substance. Mr Kara-Murza nearly died in 2015 after another case of suspected poisoning.
The three men who were arrested last week on charges of treason – a departmental head at the FSB spy agency, an officer who worked for him and the manager of a cybersecurity company – have been passing secrets to the USA for seven years, it was alleged this week.
Russia and North Korea renewed an agreement on the repatriation of North Koreans who have defected to Russia (and vice-versa, should that ever happen). There are about ten North Korean logging camps on Russian soil (in Siberia and elsewhere in the Far East), from which workers have escaped. This week the European Court of Human Rights ordered Russia not to deport one such escapee, who could face death if returned.
SPAIN: Catalonia’s former president Arturo Mas has gone on trial for contempt of court and breach of trust, in relation to 2014’s non-binding ballot on independence for Catalonia.
UKRAINE: Fighting continues around the city of Avdiivka. The electricity supply was knocked out, leaving thousands of residents without heat, light or water in freezing weather. The USA’s new ambassador to the UN condemned Russian involvement in the Ukraine crisis.
Middle East and Africa
AFGHANISTAN: An avalanche following heavy rain killed at least 50 people when it hit a village in Bargmatal.
A suicide bomber in Kabul killed at least 20 people and wounded another 41, most of them employees of the Supreme Court.
ISRAEL: Police cleared an illegal settlement at Amona, on the West Bank. The Supreme Court ordered it to be demolished two years ago.
The Knesset passed the government’s controversial bill legalizing dozens of settlements on the occupied West Bank.
LIBYA: The EU is to provide training, funding and boats to help Libyan coastguards control migration and fight people-traffickers. Experts have accused members of the coastguard of being in league with people traffickers. Boris Johnson is urging the EU to persuade the weak but UN-backed Tripoli-based government to offer an official post to General Khalifa Hiftar, who supports the rival Tobruk-based government. Italy is urging the EU to accept a role for Russia to help in the Libyan crisis; Russia also supports General Hiftar.
NIGERIA: Fears about the health of President Buhari are growing, as he not yet returned from the UK where he went for medical treatment two weeks ago.
SOMALIA: Severe drought in parts of the country could lead to famine, according to the UN.
Schools and public transport in Mogadishu have been closed for two days while presidential elections take place, amid fears of terrorist action by al-Shabaab.
SYRIA: Regime forces announced that they had pushed Isis forces back from territory north of Aleppo.
A new report from Amnesty International published further accounts of the widespread and organised use of detention, torture, sexual abuse and execution by Assad’s regime.
ZIMBABWE: Pastor Evan Mwarire, the #This Flag activist, has been arrested on his return from the USA, whence he fled six months ago when his life was threatened.
Far East, Asia and Pacific
HONG KONG: A Chinese-born Canadian billionaire businessman has disappeared from the hotel where he was living. There are fears that he has been detained by Chinese police and taken to the mainland, which would be illegal under the “one country, two systems” principle.
JAPAN: The supreme court rejected a convicted sex criminal’s claim that he had a “right to be forgotten”, and upheld Google’s claim that removing reports of his offences from its search engine would infringe freedom of expression.
Building work began on a new US Marine Corps base at Henoko on Okinawa Island. The project is opposed by the government of Okinawa prefecture.
KOREA, NORTH: Reports from South Korea say that Kim Jong Un has sacked Kim Won Hong, the head of his secret police. Kim Won Hong has been replaced as head of the ministry of state security and has been reduced in rank from four-star general to one-star general. Sources also say that a number of his officers have been executed.
KOREA, SOUTH: Former UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon announced his withdrawal as a candidate for the Presidency, after a campaign dogged by bad PR, allegations of corruption and family scandals.
PAKISTAN: An avalanche following heavy rain killed at least 13 people and destroyed 20 homes when it hit a village in the north western Chitral district.
America
USA: The national security adviser General Michael Flynn put Iran “on notice”, and fresh sanctions were imposed, in response to recent missile tests.
Donald Trump has given his chief strategist Stephen Bannon a place on the National Security Council, an unusual privilege for a political advisor. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence have been excluded from the NSC, an equally unusual move.
A phone conversation between Trump and the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, planned to be an hour long, was terminated angrily after 25 minutes, when Trump threatened to turn his back on a refugee deal with Australia struck by his predecessor.
A federal judge and a federal court have overturned Trump’s immigration bans. The administration is launching a legal appeal.
