16 July 2015
Week in Brief: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
AFGHANISTAN: A US drone strike has killed Shahidullah Shahid (a senior Isis commander) and five other militants, according to the Afghan intelligence agency.
BAHRAIN: Ibrahim Sharif, an opposition leader who was jailed following Arab Spring protests, has been arrested a month after finishing his four-year sentence.
BRAZIL: A sixteen-month investigation into corruption involving construction businesses and politicians has led to allegations that President Rousseff received illegal donations to finance election campaigns.
CHAD: 15 people were killed and 80 injured when a Boko Haram suicide bomber blew himself up in the N’Djamena marketplace. He was disguised as a woman in a burka. Chad is taking a robust stance against Boko Haram.
CHINA: A draft cyber-security law was passed this week, proposing that internet providers must disclose the real names of their users and censor their activities, and that the authorities should have the power to close down the internet altogether.
Over 100 lawyers and human rights activists were arrested over the weekend, according to the Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group.
The government has been attempting to prop up the Chinese Stock Market as it begins to slide into a crash.
FRANCE: As the safety and livelihood of cross-Channel lorry drivers continue to be threatened by illegal migrants, it was announced that a secure zone will be created in Calais for their vehicles.
GAZA: Israel has reported that two Israelis and the bodies of two soldiers killed during last years war, are being held hostage in Gaza by militants.
GERMANY: Two people were killed and one wounded in random drive-by shootings in Bavaria. A local man was arrested after being disarmed by two mechanics at a petrol station.
GREECE: Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras signed a deal with his EU creditors after a gruelling 17 hour summit of EU leaders on Sunday and Monday. The economic reforms and measures pledged in return for further bail-outs are tougher and more austere than any others previously demanded from Greece in spite of Tsipras’s election pledges, his promises to the nation prior to the referendum and the referendum’s ‘no’ result.
The deal now has to be approved by the Greek, German and other EU parliaments. The IMF believes that even these measures are inadequate, according to a leaked report.
Banks in Greece remain closed.
INDONESIA: The volcano Mount Raung erupted in East Java, near to Bali, closing five airports including Denpasar, Bali’s tourist airport.
IRAN: A deal between Iran and the US-led P5+1 (US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China) was signed in Vienna after nearly two years of negotiations. Iran has agreed to scale down and freeze its nuclear-weapons programme for ten to fifteen years; P5+1 will drop its economic sanctions (once compliance is proved) and arms embargo (after five years).
President Obama hopes that the deal will contribute to peace and stability in the region and encourage Iran (condemned as a terrorist state for the last ten years) to become a responsible, co-operative and less threatening member of the international community. It is also hoped that it will encourage liberal reform within the country. The US and Iran have been co-operating in recent months to combat Isis in Syria and Iraq.
His critics include Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Republicans. They claim that the deal will make it easier for Iran to achieve its nuclear ambitions; that the increased wealth from lifted sanctions will strengthen the country’s hard-line theocratic regime and give it even more resources to finance Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist groups; and that it will trigger a nuclear arms race in the region.
The deal needs to be passed by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran and by Congress in Washington. Congress has sixty days to examine the deal. President Obama has threatened to veto any attempt to reject it.
IRAQ: Government forces and Shia militias have launched attacks on Fallujah and Ramadi in another attempt to drive Isis out of the predominantly Sunni province of Anbar. An Iraqi army spokesman said that local Sunni tribal fighters were also taking part in the attack. The US delivered the first four of thirty-six F-16 jets to the Iraq air force.
ISRAEL: Military police are investigating a number of senior army officers about alleged war crimes allegedly committed during last year’s war in Gaza.
JAPAN: The current session of parliament has been extended to September as prime minister Shinzo Abe attempts to push through new laws to allow Japanese soldiers to fight abroad.
MEXICO: Mexico’s most infamous drugs baron has made a second escape from jail. Joaquin Guzman (‘El Chapo’ or ‘Shorty’), the head of the Sinaloa drugs cartel, was sentenced to twenty years for drugs trafficking in 1993, escaped from jail in a laundry basket in 2001, was recaptured last year and sent to Altiplano jail. He escaped from Altiplano this week through a 1500m tunnel from the shower area of his cell to a building site near the prison.
MOROCCO: Two women have been acquitted of gross indecency after being arrested for wearing dresses in public.
NIGERIA: The new president Muhammadu Buhari has sacked all Nigeria’s military leaders. Nigeria’s armed forces have been criticised as ineffective and corrupt, and last month Amnesty International accused them of human rights violations.
PLUTO: Nasa’s New Horizons probe is passing through the Kuiper Belt in the outer reaches of our solar system, sending back the first ever pictures and new information about Pluto and its five moons. Pluto is forty times further away from the sun than is the earth.
ROMANIA: Prime minister Victor Ponta has had his assets seized following allegations of corruption.
RUSSIA: The Federal Security Service has tabled laws to prevent public disclosure of property ownership. The opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his followers have been investigating corruption by enquiring about ownership of luxury country retreats.
Twenty-three sleeping Russian soldiers were killed and ten badly injured when the roof of their barracks collapsed in Svetly, Siberia.
SYRIA: Kurdish YPG militia, their allies and government forces are holding off an Isis assault on the city of Hasakah in north Syria near its border with Iraq. The London-based Syrian Observatory For Human Rights reported that two key Isis officials have been killed in the fighting.
TUNISIA: Tunisia is to build a 104 mile-long wall along its border with Libya, to prevent terrorists from crossing the border.
UGANDA: A former prime minister, Amama Mbabazi, and another opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, were arrested in what is widely seen as an attempt by President Musoveni to stifle opposition.
UKRAINE: Ukrainian security forces fought with an extreme right-wing nationalist militia, the Right Sector, at Mukachevo, west Ukraine. Three people were killed.
USA: The Confederate flag has been removed from South Carolina’s state house and placed in a museum. The Civil War era banner of the slave-owning southern states remains as part of the design on the Mississippi state flag, however, and there are calls for it to be removed.
Nasa has begun to train military test pilots for space flights for the first time since the last space shuttle flight four years ago. The astronauts will travel to Mars in public-sector rockets built by Boeing and Space-X.
Scott Walker, the Republican governor of Wisconsin, announced his entry into the race for the White House. He is best known for his conflicts with unions and public sector workers. The total of Republican candidates now stands at 15 with Jeb Bush as the favourite.
VATICAN: The former archbishop Josef Wesolowski has gone on trial accused of sexually abusing children .
