Weekly News Wrap: Monday, May 11, 2015

Africa

• Since Nigeria’s army began clearing large areas of the country’s northeast from Boko Haram, some of the 1.5 million internally displaced people have started returning home. But thousands could now face severe food shortages as reconstruction lags behind.
• Rival armed groups in Central African Republic agreed on Sunday to a peace accord requiring them to disarm and potentially face justice for war crimes committed during two years of conflict.
• At least five people were killed when militants from Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamist group attacked a village in southwestern Niger, two Niger military officers said on Thursday.
• The civil war in South Sudan has already killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than a million. Now, another 100,000 people have been forced to leave their homes as fighting between rebels and government forces resumes.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• Air strikes by a coalition of Arab nations on Saada city in Yemen are in breach of international law, despite calls for civilians to leave the area, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen said.
• The United States and its allies have conducted 15 air strikes against Islamic State in Syria and 13 in Iraq since Friday, the coalition leading the operations said in a statement.

Asia

• Malaysia detained 1,018 Bangladeshi and Rohingya refugees after they arrived in three boats on Monday, police said, a day after Indonesian authorities rescued 600 stranded off the coast of Aceh.
• South Korea has said that North Korea’s recent test-firing of a ballistic missile from a submarine was “very serious and concerning”, and that it will respond “mercilessly” to the threat.
• China has invited Russian troops to march in a parade in Beijing in September to commemorate the end of World War Two, the Defence Ministry said on Monday, a move likely to further put off Western leaders from attending.
• Thailand’s government has stepped up its efforts to stop human trafficking on its southern border.
• A Pakistan military helicopter carrying diplomats to inspect a tourism project crashed on Friday killing seven people, including the ambassadors of Norway and the Philippines and the wives of the Malaysian and Indonesian ambassadors.
• Japan and the Philippines will hold their first joint naval drill this month in the South China Sea near a disputed shoal claimed by Beijing, sources in Tokyo and the Philippines said.
• Newly released images show Vietnam has carried out significant land reclamation at two sites in the disputed South China Sea, though the scale and pace is dwarfed by that of China, a U.S. research institute said.

Europe

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday that the peace process in eastern Ukraine was progressing despite difficulties.
• Europe’s chequered attempt to build a common foreign and security policy has a new face, Italy’s Federica Mogherini, but the European Union is stuck with the same old problems despite her bright start.
• A Norwegian court sentenced three men to jail on Friday for joining or aiding the Islamic State militant group in Syria, in the first case of its kind in the Nordic region.

Americas

• The United States on Friday described as horrifying accusations of sexual abuse of children by French and African troops in Central African Republic, and called for a separate inquiry into how the United Nations handled the allegations.
• The European Union and the United States are close to completing negotiations on a deal protecting personal data shared for law enforcement purposes such as terrorism investigations, three people familiar with the matter said.
• Omar Khadr, a Canadian who was once the youngest prisoner held on terror charges at Guantanamo Bay, was released on bail from an Alberta prison Thursday while he appeals a murder conviction by a U.S. military tribunal.

Oceania

• Australian police said on Saturday they had thwarted an imminent terror attack after discovering explosives at a Melbourne home and arresting a 17-year-old boy, in the latest example of the threat posed by radicalized teenagers in the country.

UN/World

• European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said on Friday she had not given up hope of winning backing from the United Nations Security Council for international intervention in Libya to help stop the flow of migrant boats.
• An estimated 25,000 Rohingyas and Bangladeshis boarded people-smugglers’ boats in the first three months of this year, twice as many in the same period of 2014, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday.
• United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday that after a new Israeli government has been sworn in he will investigate whether there are “realistic options” for a return to peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.