Weekly News Wrap: Monday, October 13, 2014

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

Africa

• Two people were killed in fighting in the capital of Central African Republic and six peacekeepers from Burundi and Cameroon were wounded in an ambush, a spokeswoman for the United Nations mission in the country said on Saturday.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• Kurdish defenders held off Islamic State militants in Syria’s border town of Kobani on Sunday, but the fighters struck with deadly bombings in Iraq, killing dozens of Kurds in the north and assassinating a provincial police commander in the west. 
• U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called on Sunday for a renewed commitment to achieving Middle East peace, saying a lasting deal between Israel, the Palestinians and all their neighbors could be achieved.

Asia

• India and Pakistan exchanged gunfire across the Kashmir frontier on Saturday, Indian military officials said, ending a pause in fighting that has already killed 17 civilians in the two countries in the worst skirmishes in a decade. 
• Hundreds of student activists camped overnight in Hong Kong as the protesters tried to re-gather momentum after the government called off talks aimed at defusing unrest in the global financial hub.
• North Korea’s state media said on Saturday that expected talks with the South to try to improve ties between the rivals were in danger of being canceled because authorities in Seoul allowed a group to send leaflets hostile to Pyongyang. South Korea warned North Korea of a “strong” response to shooting incident after the leaflets were allegedly sent.  
• An Afghan official said a NATO air strike killed seven civilians in the country’s east, including a nine-year-old child, but the international coalition said on Monday the strike killed eight militants who had fired on its forces.

Europe

• The Russian navy twice interfered with a Finnish state environmental research vessel in international waters in August and September, the Finnish Environment Institute said on Saturday. 
• British lawmakers will hold a symbolic parliamentary vote on Monday on whether the government should recognize Palestine as a state, a move unlikely to shift official policy but designed to raise the political profile of the issue. Last week, Sweden became the first major European country to officially recognize Palestine’s statehood. 
• Ukrainian search teams will comb the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which went down on July 17, and return human remains and belongings to the Netherlands, Dutch television reported.
• Switzerland’s business elite published an appeal in a Swiss newspaper on Sunday to save the country’s accords with the European Union from unraveling due to a vote earlier this year to curb immigration from the bloc.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian troops to withdraw to their permanent bases after military exercises in Rostov region near the border with Ukraine, the Kremlin said, in a sign of some tension easing before a key meeting next week.

Americas

• The United States has condemned Kyrgyzstan for planning to adopt legislation to ban “gay propaganda”, saying the law discriminates and will hurt the Central Asian nation’s fragile civil society.
• A U.S. drone strike killed two suspected militants in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, Pakistani intelligence officials said, part of a flurry of strikes this week after a long pause earlier this year.

Oceania

• Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Monday that he would use an upcoming G20 leaders summit to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin over the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 and the “murder” of Australian citizens.

UN/World

• UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has made a surprise visit to the Libyan capital aiming to bolster talks between rival groups that have divided the North African nation with two separate parliaments and governments.