Weekly News Wrap: Monday, November 24, 2014

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world:

Africa

• Caught in a forgotten war between rebels and government forces and beset by bandits who roam the lawless roads, villagers in Darfur say their lives can scarcely get any worse if Sudan insists on international peacekeepers leaving their region.
• Transitional leaders in Burkina Faso have agreed on a new government to guide the country to elections next year, allocating several key cabinet posts to the military.
• The Somali Islamist militant group al Shabaab said it had staged an attack in Kenya on Saturday in which gunmen ordered non-Muslims off a bus and shot 28 dead, while sparing Muslim passengers.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• Iran and six world powers are expected to break off negotiations on Monday and meet again next month after missing a deadline to clinch a final deal to resolve their 12-year standoff over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, diplomatic sources said.
• Iraqi forces have mounted their biggest operation since June, reclaiming two towns in the eastern province of Diyala from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters.
• Saudi authorities have stepped up their crackdown on online dissidents, Human Rights Watch said, alleging that prosecutors and judges use “vague law” to charge citizens for peaceful tweets and social media comments.
• Nearly 800 people have been rescued from boats in distress in the Mediterranean Sea in the last 48 hours, Italian and Libyan officials said.
• U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said he and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan he had discussed a transition of power in Syria away from President Bashar al-Assad during a four-hour meeting in Istanbul on Saturday.

Asia

• Chinese authorities in the northern region of Inner Mongolia arrested 31 people on suspicion of trafficking women because they had held 14 people, 11 of them from Myanmar, state media said on Monday.
• North Korea’s top military body has warned of “catastrophic consequences” for supporters of the latest United Nations censure on its human rights record, as state media reported leader Kim Jong-Un presided over fresh military drills.
• India on Monday named its powerful national security adviser as a special envoy on China, opening the way for resumption of talks on the disputed border, where tensions have risen in recent months over border patrols and stiffer defenses.
• China on Monday hit back at “irresponsible remarks” from the United States which has called on Beijing to stop a land reclamation project in the disputed South China Sea that could be large enough to accommodate an airstrip.
• A former leader of Bangladesh’s ruling party was sentenced to death by a war crimes tribunal on Monday in connection with atrocities committed during the country’s war of independence from Pakistan.
• A Philippine court on Monday fined nine Chinese fishermen $102,000 each after they were caught with hundreds of sea turtles in a disputed shoal in the South China Sea amid a festering territorial standoff between the two sides.

Europe

• Britain is facing the biggest terrorism threat in its history and has foiled around 40 major plots since suicide bombers attacked London in 2005, Home Secretary Theresa May said on Monday.
• Lower oil prices and Western financial sanctions imposed over the Ukraine crisis will cost Russia around $130-140 billion a year – equivalent to around 7 percent of its economy – Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Monday.
• The United States will keep troops in Poland and the Baltic states for at least the next year as tensions with Russia remain, the commander of U.S. land forces in Europe said on Sunday.
• A week-long operation to clear the wreckage from the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in Ukraine has been completed, according to the Dutch government.
• The number of Germans fighting alongside Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq has increased sharply to 550 and around 180 have returned, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence said in a newspaper interview published on Sunday.

Americas

• The United States wants to step up its trade dialogue with India, Trade Representative Michael Froman said on Monday, after the resolution of a global trade dispute paved the way for President Barack Obama to visit India.
• Mexico said on Sunday it was summoning Uruguay’s ambassador after Uruguayan President Jose Mujica said that the disappearance of 43 students in southwest Mexico suggests the country is a failed state.
• A group of 15 Cuban migrants waved to onlookers as they set sail from Grand Cayman aboard a 14-foot homemade boat on Friday after a brief overnight stop, hoping to make the risky 400-mile journey across the Caribbean to the north coast of Honduras.

UN/World

• A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazahkstan on Sunday to deliver three new crew members to the International Space Station, including Italy’s first female astronaut.