Weekly News Wrap: Monday, November 2, 2015

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

Africa

• Rebel fighters in South Sudan have released 13 United Nations workers who were held hostage for a week, the UN has said.
• Al-Shabab fighters in Somalia have struck again – managing to evade security measures to stage an attack in downtown Mogadishu.
• At least two soldiers and 11 militants were killed on Sunday in suspected Boko Haram attacks on two remote military posts in the Lake Chad area, Chad’s government and military sources said.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• Libya’s elected government has accused the Italian navy of violating the country’s territorial waters after authorities said they spotted three Italian warships off the eastern coast, but Italy’s government on Sunday dismissed the claim.

Asia

• South Korea, Japan, and China have agreed to restore trade and security ties, in addition to economic co-operation, after the countries’ leaders held their first three-way discussions in more than three years.
• Nepali police shot and killed an Indian citizen at a border checkpoint on Monday as they tried to clear protesters whose blockade has strangled Nepal’s fuel supplies and badly damaged relations between the neighbors.
• The U.S. and South Korean defense chiefs urged North Korea on Monday to immediately cease all activities related to its nuclear program and said they will have no tolerance for any military provocation by Pyongyang.
• Japan, which accepted less than a dozen asylum seekers last year, should show more leadership on refugees and craft an immigration policy given its need for foreign workers, a former U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said on Thursday.

Europe

• Throughout Europe’s migrant crisis, Sweden has laid out the welcome mat for tens of thousands of asylum seekers, but in towns like Munkedal and other small communities, someone has replaced it with death threats and arson.
• The number of migrants and refugees entering Europe by sea last month was roughly the same as for the whole of 2014, United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said on Monday.
• The West is to blame for the refugee crisis confronting Europe after it interfered in the affairs of Middle Eastern countries to try and push its own values, such as democracy, but only caused chaos, a former senior Chinese diplomat has said.
• The European Union sided with Washington on Friday over a U.S.-Chinese patrolling incident in the South China Sea, in a move that may affect Brussels’ discussions with Beijing at next week’s Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) of foreign affairs ministers.

Americas

• The last British resident to be held in Guantánamo Bay, Shaker Aamer, has been released and has landed in the UK, having been detained for 13 years.
• Colombia’s FARC rebel group said its 3-month-old unilateral ceasefire, declared amid peace talks with the government to end 51 years of war, may be at risk because of a rise in military actions against its fighters.
• Disputes over territory in the South China Sea are causing countries in the region to increase their demand for an American security presence, the U.S. defense chief said on Sunday.

Oceania

• Australia is being forced to seek new countries to take its refugees after the Philippines said it won’t accept them.

UN/World

• The U.N. special envoy to Yemen said on Sunday he expects talks between its warring parties to begin by mid-November, eight months after the start of a messy civil war that has killed thousands and caused a humanitarian crisis.
• U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and International Committee of the Red Cross President Peter Maurer made what they called an “unprecedented joint warning” on Saturday for states to stop conflicts, respect international law and aid refugees.