Weekly News Wrap: Monday, November 9, 2015

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

Africa

• Residents of Sierra Leone’s capital held a candlelit vigil and celebrations to mark the end of an Ebola epidemic that has killed almost 4,000 people including more than 220 health workers since it began last year.
• The international community has condemned Burundi’s government for inciting violence amid a deteriorating security situation in the country and expressed alarm at a number of apparent summary executions.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has released 37 Assyrian Christians from the towns of Tal Shiram and Tal Jazira, according to a monitoring group.
• U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet on Monday for the first time since the Israeli leader lost his battle against the Iran nuclear deal, with Washington seeking his re-commitment to a two-state solution with the Palestinians.
• A pilotless U.S. military drone crashed in rural Kuwait on Sunday, causing no injuries, the small Gulf Arab state’s defense ministry said in a statement.
• Two Serbian embassy employees, a man and a woman, have been abducted in Libya’s northwestern coastal city of Sabratha while travelling with a convoy to Tunisia, the government in Belgrade said.
• Morocco’s king has renewed Rabat’s insistence that there will be no compromise on the kingdom’s claim to sovereignty over the Western Sahara, vowing that he will offer no more than autonomy to end the four-decade deadlock over the region.

Asia

• The Philippine Supreme Court is expected to decide that a new U.S.-Philippine security agreement is constitutional and will announce its ruling before President Barack Obama visits Manila next week for an Asia-Pacific summit, a source said.
• NATO partners are considering ways of beefing up their training and assistance mission in Afghanistan as concern grows over the ability of local forces to fight an escalating insurgency by Taliban militants, according to officials in Brussels and Kabul.
• A day after Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou held historic talks in Singapore, the island’s opposition leader and presidential frontrunner said on Sunday: only the people of Taiwan can decide its future and will do so in elections in January, as China’s top newspaper warned peace was at risk if it opted for independence.

Europe

• The Polish government’s decision to accept 6,800 refugees fleeing Syria and Eritrea has created a fierce debate dividing Polish society with opponents of the decision dominating the discussion.
• Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists have agreed to complete a withdrawal of heavy weaponry from their frontlines in eastern Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Friday after a round of peace talks in Berlin.
• Germany needs to be tougher in the refugee crisis and do more to help secure Europe’s external borders, European Council President Donald Tusk said ahead of a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday.

Americas

• After standing by Communist Cuba in its years of international isolation, Mexico welcomed Cuban President Raul Castro on Friday as it seeks to turn Havana’s thawing relations with the United States into a major business opportunity on the island.
• Venezuela said a U.S. Coast Guard intelligence plane violated its airspace on Friday and that other planes with capacity to gather information were circulating close to the South American country.
• U.S. and coalition forces are likely to increase air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria in coming weeks after a lull in September and October, the head of U.S. Air Forces Central Command said Saturday.
• Wealthy Gulf Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar as well as the so-called BRICs emerging market nations should do more to help Syrian refugees, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.
• The Obama administration is moving to increase and accelerate the number of Syrian refugees who might be admitted into the United States by opening new screening outposts in Iraq and Lebanon, administration officials told Reuters on Friday.

Oceania

• A riot has erupted at a controversial offshore refugee-detention facility in Australia following the death of asylum-seeker.

UN/World

• Without the right policies to keep the poor safe from extreme weather and rising seas, climate change could drive over 100 million more people into poverty by 2030, the World Bank said on Sunday.