Weekly News Wrap: Monday, February 2, 2015

02 Feb Weekly News Wrap: Monday, February 2, 2015

02.02.15 | 0 Comments

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

Malian rebels fought pro-government militia in the northern village of Kano overnight, three security sources said, firing rockets and briefly kidnapping at least 20 people in the latest spike of violence between armed groups.
Chadian forces have killed 120 militants from Boko Haram in a battle in the north of neighbouring Cameroon that began when the insurgents attacked its troops, the army said in a statement on Saturday, adding that three of its soldiers were killed.
Nigerians who fled from Boko Haram fighters have now become a headache for Chadian authorities after seeking safety across the border.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has dismissed concerns that his appointment as new African Union chairman would harm relations between the pan-African bloc and the West.
Suspected Boko Haram fighters have launched an offensive against the key Nigerian city of Maiduguri, the largest city in Borno State, witnesses said.

At least 10 people have been killed in Yemen over the past four days in attacks led by an al Qaeda’s affiliate against Shi’ite Houthi fighters and the Yemeni army, local officials and the group said.
Jordan has vowed to do all it can to save the life of a pilot held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) after the group released a video purportedly showing the killing of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto.
A suspected U.S. drone strike on a car in Yemen killed three men believed to be al Qaeda militants on Saturday and possibly another drone crashed in a different part of the country, residents said.
The United States and its allies carried out 27 air strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria since early Friday, the Combined Joint Task Force leading the operation reported on Saturday.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday he wanted to debate the possibility of Japan’s military rescuing Japanese citizens abroad, a day after Islamic State militants said they had beheaded a Japanese journalist.
Thousands of pro-democracy protesters returned to the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday in the first large-scale rally since demonstrations rocked the global financial hub late last year.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has struck a conciliatory note hours before Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis was due to seek support for a renegotiation of the country’s $270bn bailout in Paris.
Artillery attacks on the Ukrainian city of Donetsk killed at least one civilian on Monday while Kiev’s military reported that five more Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in clashes with separatists in the east in the past 24 hours.
The Appeals Chamber of the ICTY on Friday upheld genocide convictions [PDF] for Vujadin Popovic and Ljubisa Beara for crimes perpetrated by Bosnian Serb forces during the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

North Korea said on Sunday the United States had rejected an invitation to send one of its top diplomats to Pyongyang, accusing Washington of trying to shift the blame for the deadlock in denuclearisation talks on the North.
A district court held that environmental groups lack standing to challenge the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s approval of a $90 million loan guarantee that supports a three-year, $100 million loan from a private bank to a coal exporter.

Two Australian citizens are next in line to be executed for drug offences in Indonesia, the Southeast Asian nation’s attorney general said on Monday, in a move likely to strain ties between the neighbors. .

Fighting and other violence in Iraq killed at least 1,375 people including 790 civilians in January, the United Nations said on Sunday.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon has backed an African Union (AU) proposal to send a regional force to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria, as warplanes from Chad carried out air strikes against the armed group.

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