Weekly News Wrap: Thursday, October 17, 2013

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

Middle East

• The latest round of talks between Iran and world powers have concluded in Geneva, with Iran indicating a willingness to scale back uranium enrichment, as well as allowing for snap inspections of its nuclear sites as part of a new proposal to end a decade-long standoff with world powers.
• Egypt’s foreign minister acknowledged that relations with the US were in a “delicate” phase after it suspended some military aid in response to a July 3 coup.

Asia

• US military forces have captured Latifullah Mehsud, a senior commander with the Pakistani Taliban, according to the US State Department.
• Japanese authorities may have underestimated by 20 percent the radiation doses workers got in the initial phase of the Fukushima plant disaster, a Japanese newspaper reported citing a U.N. panel.

Africa

• Deputy Kenyan President William Ruto said he would continue to cooperate with the International Criminal Court despite a call from African leaders for his case and that of President Uhuru Kenyatta to be delayed.
• The UN has asked for more troops and helicopters so its peacekeeping mission in Mali can effectively stabilize the north of the country and protect civilians from attacks by Islamist extremist and armed groups.
• Lawfare offers a post about the backstory of Charles Taylor’s imprisonment in the United Kingdom.

Europe

• The European Commission has urged EU governments to reopen stalled membership talks with Turkey despite Ankara’s crackdown on protesters.
• More than 128 migrants have been rescued after their raft sank off the Mediterranean coast of Malta, amid a fresh appeal by the country’s prime minister to Europe to take action to manage the growing influx of refugees.
• The Netherlands was seeking answers after a Dutch diplomat was beaten in Moscow, the latest in a series of incidents testing relations between the two countries, including the recent arrest of Greenpeace activists from the Arctic Sunrise ship (flying under the Dutch flag), about which Germany’s Angela Merkel has also expressed concern.
• Prosecutors in Hungary charged a 92-year-old former interior minister with war crimes related to his suppression of civilians during the Hungarian uprising against Soviet rule in 1956.
• In a report commissioned ahead of an EU summit in December, Catherine Ashton (the EU foreign policy chief) said European governments should commit to cooperative projects in drones, a new satellite communications system, cyber defense and plugging a shortfall in air tankers.

Americas

• The Washington Post details that the US National Security Agency has had a much bigger role in targeted killings than previously known, garnered from information that has come to light with the recent leaks by Edward Snowden.
• The US government shutdown has come to an end after both houses of Congress approved a bill that averted a threatened default and reopened the federal government.
• Pakistani teenage activist Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban for campaigning for girls’ education, will be granted honorary Canadian citizenship. Reuters reports that many in Yousafzai’s hometown resent her.
• Venezuela and Guyana will meet to resolve the fate of a ship and crew hired by a U.S. oil exploration firm that Venezuela seized in waters disputed for more than a century by the South American neighbors.

Worldwide

• Nearly 30 million people are living in slavery across the globe, many of them men, women and children trafficked by gangs for sex work and unskilled labor, according to a global slavery index by the Walk Free Foundation.