28 May 2015
News in Brief: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
IRELAND: The Irish people voted in a referendum last week to amend their constitution to allow members of the gay community to marry. The change had been opposed by the Roman Catholic Church. There is now expected to be a movement to legalise abortion.
FRANCE: The 75th anniversary of the evacuation from Dunkirk was marked by a flotilla re-enacting the Little Ships fleet crossing the Channel, the unveiling of a memorial on the beach, and services and parades attended by veterans.
SPAIN: The ruling Popular party lost heavily in local elections, their worst defeat in 24 years. The country’s other established party, the Socialists, also did badly. The parties which made significant gains were the new, radical, anti-corruption, left-wing Podemos (We Can) party and the new centre liberal Ciudadanos (Citizens) party. The Popular party hopes to win back voters in time for the general election in 6 months time.
GREECE: The country’s industry, energy and environment minister, Panagiotis Lafazanis, is leading a rebel faction, the Leftist Platform, within the governing Syriza party to try to prevent it from signing any agreement with the country’s creditors that would betray the party’s anti-austerity election pledges.
The credit ratings agency, Moodys, has raised the possibility of Greece having to introduce capital controls to stop money leaving the country. Efforts are being made to reach agreement so that Greece will be provided with funds to make a payment to the IMF which is due on 5 June.
POLAND: Andrzej Duda, a Eurosceptic MEP for the nationalist Law and Justice party, has been elected President, ousting the conservative Bronislaw Komorowski. It is thought that this may lead to the election of a Eurosceptic government in Poland later this year.
LATVIA: Leaders of the EU and of the post-soviet states of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine met in Riga in the latest summit to discuss east-west partnerships based on trade and democratic values. Discussions were over-shadowed by the failure of EU hopes in the Ukraine and by the probability that the EU will fail to achieve the unanimity required to renew sanctions against Putin’s Russia when they expire in July.
UKRAINE: Amnesty International has published a report accusing both sides in the conflict – Kiev and pro-Moscow rebels – of using torture on prisoners.
A rebel commander, Alexai Mozgovoi, was ambushed and killed. Kiev has claimed that he was killed in a feud between pro-Russian rebels for challenging the Minsk cease-fire agreement.
RUSSIA: Roskomnadzor, the country’s media watchdog, has ordered Google, Facebook and Twitter to block content concerned with political protest, criticism or opposition, and has demanded disclosure of the number of visitors to particular web-pages. The Centre For Research in Legitimacy and Political Protest, a pro-Kremlin body, claims to have created a program which can search through social media for opposition political activity.
The Duma passed a law allowing the punishment of any foreign organisations classed by prosecutors as ‘undesirable’, and the imprisonment of any Russian dealing with them. This is thought to be aimed at charities and other NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. It could also be used against foreign businesses and media.
Russia’s Audit Chamber (state auditor) has uncovered 92 billion roubles (more than one billion pounds) of financial irregularities at Roscosmos, the national space agency. Most of these relate to the building of the new space centre, Vostochny Cosmodrome, in Russia’s far eastern Amur region. In the past year, the head of the project’s main contractor was arrested for stealing £23 million of state funds, building workers have gone on hunger strike over unpaid wages, and twenty criminal cases involving over 220 officials have been initiated. Russia’s Proton rocket crashed this month (the seventh time in five years). Russia’s Progress space craft also crashed this month.
TURKEY: The boyfriend of the teenage singer shot in the head for entering a TV talent competition has been charged with her attempted murder.
SYRIA: Islamic State forces captured the city of Palmyra. They also seized the al-Waleed border-crossing on the road from Damascus to Baghdad. Although as yet untouched (and many of its artifacts were moved to safety before Isis took over), the ancient remains of Palmyra’s pre-Islamic city, a World Heritage site, are in danger – in Iraq, Isis recently destroyed the ancient sites of Nimrud, Mosul and Hatra with explosives and mechanical diggers.
Brigadier-General Bassem Ali Muhanna of the Syrian army was killed by a bomb attack on his car in Damascus.
IRAQ: The Shia dominated government is hoping that Iranian-backed Shia militias will be able to retake the city of Ramada, Anbar province, which fell to Isis last week. However, this has raised fears that this will spark a return to the sectarian conflict – Shia government against the largely Sunni population of Anbar province – which enabled Isis (a Sunni force) to take power there in the first place. So the government is considering re-arming the local Sunni tribes to redress the sectarian inbalance.
SAUDI ARABIA: A suicide bomber killed 21 worshippers inside a Shia-minority mosque in a village in the east of the country.
EGYPT: The army has blocked 521 tunnels used by smugglers to pass goods and people in and out of the Gaza strip. Egypt has attempted to blockade the Gaza strip since Hamas, the militant group associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, took control there in 2007.
ALGERIA: The army killed 25 jihadists in operations against armed insurgents.
KENYA: Archaeologists have found stone tools which could overturn the idea that our genus homo was the first tool-maker. The 150 worked flints were discovered at the site of a 3.3 million year old workshop, pre-dating the earliest known homo remains by 500,000 years and the earliest evidence of human tool-making by 700,000 years.
BURUNDI: Zedi Feuzi, the leader of the opposition party UPD-Zigamibanga, was murdered outside his home by drive-by gunmen.
BURMA: Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the pro-democracy party, called for the country’s persecuted Rohinga Muslim to be given citizenship. Malaysia and Indonesia agreed to provide temporary shelter for 7000 Muslim Rohinga refugees from Burma. In Malaysia, mass graves containing hundreds of bodies, thought to be the remains of illegal migrants, have been found at jungle camps abandoned by human traffickers.
NORTH KOREA: Pyongyang has cancelled an invitation to Ban Ki Moon, the UN secretary general and former South Korean foreign minister, to visit the Kaesong industrial park (the last remaining big joint venture between North and South) just north of the border
CHINA: A US military surveillance aircraft flying over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, in airspace considered by the US to be international, was warned by China to leave the area eight times last week. The disputed islands lie 800 miles from the Chinese mainland, between the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia, and are claimed by all the surrounded countries. China is building artificial islands on reefs including a large runway and docking facilities perhaps suitable for military purposes. A UN Convention on the Law of the Sea disallows land reclamation to be used to claim nautical territorial zones. Fears of potential armed conflict grew this week with a Chinese government review of strategy proposing a more assertive military approach in protecting what China regards as its rights and properties in the disputed area.
China hosted two days of peace talks between Afghan and Taliban representatives.
USA: The Nobel-prize winning mathematician John Nash (the subject of the film A Beautiful Mind) was killed with his wife in a car-crash in New Jersey.
Michael Brelo, a white police officer who shot an unarmed black couple dead in Cleveland in 2012, has been cleared of manslaughter.
In drought-struck California, nearly 50 million gallons of water – enough to supply 500 homes for a year – was lost when vandals destroyed an inflatable damn in Alameda county.
MEXICO: Forty-two suspected members of the Jalisco New Generation drugs cartel and one policeman were killed in a three-hour gun battle at a ranch in western Mexico.
