Weekly News Wrap: Monday, March 21, 2016

21 Mar Weekly News Wrap: Monday, March 21, 2016

21.03.16 | 0 Comments

Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world:

A former Congolese vice-president becomes the most senior political leader ever to face judgment before the International Criminal Court on Monday, when judges rule on whether he committed war crimes in the Central African Republic (CAR). The judgment will be handed down at 14:00 (CET) and will be streamed here. More information on the case from the Court is found here.
The Kenyan military said on Sunday its troops killed 34 fighters from the armed al-Shabab group in clashes in Somalia.
The Democratic Republic of Congo transferred a suspect in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide to Rwanda on Sunday, Rwandan officials said.

A Turkish member of the Islamic State militant group was responsible for Saturday’s suicide bombing in Istanbul that killed three Israelis and an Iranian, Turkey’s interior minister said.

China agreed on Monday to consider building a railway into Nepal and to start a feasibility study for a free trade agreement with the impoverished, landlocked country, which has been trying to lessen its dependence on its big neighbor to the south, India.
Indonesia protested to China on Monday against what it described as an infringement of its waters by a Chinese coastguard vessel near a disputed area of the South China Sea, the foreign minister said.
North Korea has fired several short-range missiles into the waters off its east coast, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency says.

More than 600 people have now left France for Syria and Iraq, with about 800 more wanting to leave to join Islamic State (IS), Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Sunday.
Bosnian Serb officials opened a student dormitory on Sunday named after their wartime leader Radovan Karadzic in a show of defiance before he faces Thursday’s verdict on alleged genocide during the Bosnian war.
The prime surviving suspect for the Nov. 13 Paris attacks planned to blow himself up at a sports stadium with fellow Islamic State militants but changed his mind, he told Belgian investigators on Saturday.
Italy’s coast guard said more than 900 migrants were rescued in four separate operations in the Strait of Sicily on Saturday, while Libyan authorities said they had rescued nearly 600 migrants from four boats, one of which sank.

Two aboriginal communities in Canada are taking their cases against oil pipeline and seismic testing to Supreme Court of Canada.
A detachment of U.S. Marines is on the ground in Iraq to support U.S. and coalition efforts against Islamic State, the U.S. military said on Sunday.
U.S. President Barack Obama turns from sightseeing to state business on his historic Cuba trip on Monday, pressing President Raul Castro for economic and democratic reforms while hearing complaints about continued U.S. economic sanctions.
French right-wing politician Marine Le Pen, who is touring the Canadian province of Quebec, said on Sunday the country’s immigration policy was on the “wrong path,” at an event where one of her bodyguards reportedly struck a protester.
Colombia’s second-largest rebel group has freed a soldier hostage held for more than six weeks, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Sunday, meeting a government condition for the start of peace talks.

A group of high-profile Aboriginal Australians is taking Apple, Facebook and Google to the Australian Human Rights Commission for supplying a notorious online game that promotes the killing of Aboriginal Australians.
Extreme bleaching has caused the death of large amounts of coral on Australia’s iconic Great Barrier Reef, prompting the government to implement its highest response level to help tackle the crisis.

Dozens of United Nations international staffers pulled out of their Western Sahara mission on Sunday after Morocco demanded they leave because of remarks by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon about the disputed territory.

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