25 May 2017
Week In Brief: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Europe
FRANCE: Emmanuel Macron announced his cabinet, of 11 men and 11 women. It includes two defectors from the Socialist government and two defectors from the Republican top rank.
Brazil’s anti-corruption inquiry, Operation Car Wash, has extended to France, with investigations into alleged links between French lobbying for Rio to host the 2016 Olympics and the sale of five French submarines to Brazil.
GREECE: Striking policemen attempted to storm the parliament during a protest by thousands of civil servants demonstrating against the latest austerity measures, which were passed by MPs.
IRELAND: Prime Minister Enda Kelly stepped down as leader of the Fine Gael party. A new leader will be announced next month.
SWITZERLAND: In a referendum, 58.2% voted to scrap nuclear power.
Middle East and Africa
IRAN: President Rouhani won the presidential elections, convincingly beating his main rival, the hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi.
IRAQ: Documents found at Mosul University after it was re-captured from Isis record its development of chemical weapons and poisons, including testing them on prisoners. Isis’ chemical weapons development unit moved to Raqqa from Mosul, and then to a base near the Syrian border.
ISRAEL: President Trump visited Israel and met with Prime Minister Netanyahu and with the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. He proposed peace talks between the two.
LIBYA: Forces loyal to the government of national accord attacked an airbase under the control of the rival Tubruq parliament, only days after the two governments reached an agreement to cooperate. They killed 141 people, including 38 civilians. Faiez Serraj, prime minister of the government of national accord, condemned the killings and suspended the defence minister and the commander of the West Libyan brigade who was allegedly responsible. Khalifa Haftar, the commander of the Tubruq parliament’s armed forces, launched airstrikes in retaliation for the attack.
SAUDI ARABIA: Relationships between the traditional allies the USA and Saudi Arabia were improved by President Trump’s visit. Deals to invest in US infrastructure and to buy US arms were agreed. President Trump attended gatherings of leaders from the Muslim world (except Iran), and called on them to reject extremism and drive out terrorism. He criticised Iran and Iranian-backed militias.
SYRIA: Isis captured the regime-held villages of Aqareb and al-Mabujeh in the central province of Hama. At least 15 civilians and 27 regime fighters were killed. 15 Isis fighters were killed.
The siege of al-Waer, the last rebel-held area in the city of Homs, ended with over 1000 rebel fighters surrendering their arms and another 700 bussed out to other rebel-held areas.
A US airstrike against a regime convoy of suspected Iranian-backed Shia militias killed eight troops and destroyed four vehicles. The convoy was heading for a coalition Special Forces base; it was warned off but continued to advance. Russia condemned the attack as a breach of Syrian sovereignty.
TUNISIA: A demonstrator was killed by a police car, and 50 others were taken to hospital with broken bones or tear gas problems, when crowds clashed with police in the southern province of Tatouine. They were calling for the local oil and gas industries to offer more work and benefits to the region.
TURKEY: The proprietor and three journalists of Sozcu, the third biggest newspaper in Turkey, are facing arrest for alleged Gulenist crimes.
President Erdogan recovered his position as head of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP). He had to surrender it when he became president, but the constitutional changes accepted by the recent referendum now enable the president to play an active role in party politics.
YEMEN: The cholera outbreak is intensifying, with 600 children being diagnosed every day. 250 people have died in the last three weeks.
Far East, Asia and Pacific
AFGHANISTAN: Four Isis suicide bombers and gunmen killed 7 people and wounded at least 18 others in an attack on the headquarters of the state media in Jalalabad. All four attackers were killed.
A Taliban attack on checkpoints in Zabul killed 20 police officers.
A German woman and her security guard were killed and a Finnish woman was kidnapped in an attack on a guesthouse in Kabul.
AUSTRALIA: The deputy commissioner of the Australian Taxation Office, Michael Cranston, who has been in charge of investigations into off-shore tax avoidance schemes, is facing allegations of being connected to a fraud scheme which police say has cost the taxpayer almost £100 million. His son and daughter have also been charged.
CHINA: ‘Go’ champion Ke Jie was narrowly beaten by the Alphago computer program in the first of a three-game contest. Until recently, it was believed that a machine could never master Go, a board game which has been played in China for 2,500 years and remains hugely popular throughout the Far East. The planned live television broadcast of the game was cancelled at the last minute. Some claim that the cancellation was due to official disapproval of Google, which owns the London-based company Deepmind which developed Alphago.
INDONESIA: A Sharia court in Aceh sentenced two men to be flogged in public for homosexuality. A few days later police arrested 141 men after a raid on a sauna in Jakarta. Eight men were arrested at a party in Surabaya last month.
KOREA, NORTH: A medium-range ballistic missile was test-fired, the second test in a week and the tenth this year. The UN Security Council, including China, condemned North Korea’s defiance of the UN.
KOREA, SOUTH: Former president Park Geun-hye, who lost immunity from prosecution when she was impeached and removed from office two months ago, appeared in court to face charges of bribery and abuse of office. She is on trial with her associate and spiritual advisor Choi Soon-sil and with businessman Shin Dong-bin.
THAILAND: A bomb injured 24 people when it exploded in a military hospital in Bangkok on the third anniversary of the military coup.
America
BRAZIL: Brazil’s Supreme Court has opened an investigation into allegations of corruption again President Temer, after a newspaper claimed that prosecutors have a tape recording of him approving the payment of a bribe by a businessman to a politician. The Brazilian Bar Association made a formal call for him to be impeached. Eight other such calls have been made.
USA: President Trump visited Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, Italy (for the G7 meeting in Sicily), and Belgium (for the NATO meeting in Brussels).
President Erdogan of Turkey visited President Trump in Washington. Members of Erdogan’s security team attacked peaceful Kurdish anti-Erdogan protesters outside the Whitehouse; 9 people taken to hospital and the mayor of Washington condemned the attack.
The Justice Department appointed a former FBI director, Robert Mueller, as a special counsel to oversee inquiries into allegations of Russian interference in last year’s election.
The dismissed national security adviser Michael Flynn is refusing to co-operate with the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating alleged links with the Kremlin.
Claims have been made that Trump asked the director of the office of National Intelligence and the head of the National Security Agency to deny that there was any evidence linking his election campaign to the Kremlin, when the FBI announced its investigation.
James Comey, who Trump recently sacked as head of the FBI, is to publicly testify in Congress.
One person was killed and 22 injured by a car driven into pedestrians in Time Square. The driver was arrested; he is thought to have mental health and drug problems, rather than terrorist connections.
VENEZUELA: The attorney general Luisa Ortega Diaz criticised President Maduro’s plans to side-step parliament and create a ‘people’s assembly’. Anti-Maduro demonstrations continue; a demonstrator was shot dead in Valera, the 48th death in the recent protests.
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