25 Apr Weekly News Wrap: Monday, April 25, 2016
25.04.16
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Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world:
Africa
- Zambia’s government is trying to send hundreds of refugees back to camps after two people were burned to death in anti-immigration riots in the country’s capital, Lusaka.
- Heavy fighting between a local militia and Ethiopian paramilitary militia known as the Liyu Police broke out in Galgadud region of central Somalia, residents said on Saturday.
Middle East and Northern Africa
- The UN special envoy for Syria has estimated that 400,000 people have been killed throughout the last five years of civil war, urging major and regional powers to help salvage a crumbling ceasefire.
- Yemen’s government forces battled al Qaeda in the country’s south on Saturday, aiming to push back advances the militant group has made during a year-long civil war while peace talks take place in Kuwait.
- Russian forces in Syria have fired at least twice on Israeli military aircraft, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seek improved operational coordination with Moscow, Israel’s top-selling newspaper said on Friday.
Asia
- The United States will propose that President Barack Obama visits Hiroshima, Japan’s Nikkei newspaper said on Friday, in what would be the first visit by an incumbent U.S. president to the city devastated by a U.S. nuclear attack 71 years ago.
- China has agreed with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos that the South China Sea territorial dispute should not affect relations between China and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), China’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday.
- North Korea fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile off its east coast on Saturday, South Korea said, amid concerns that the isolated state might conduct a nuclear test or a missile launch ahead of a ruling party meeting in May.
- Police in the Pakistani city of Karachi have arrested an al Qaeda operative who is on the United Nations sanctions list, a police official said on Friday.
- Indonesia on Friday defended its use of the death penalty for drug traffickers, just days after its representative was jeered at a U.N. narcotics conference, citing a steep rise in demand and consumption in Southeast Asia’s most populous country.
Europe
- Finland’s highest administrative court has ruled against the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker to Hungary as there is a risk of “inhuman and degrading treatment” in the EU member state which is widely criticised for its policies against refugees.
- A trade deal between Britain and the United States could take five to 10 years to negotiate if Britain votes to leave the European Union at a June 23 referendum, U.S. President Barack Obama told the BBC in an interview broadcast on Sunday.
Americas
- U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday there were no plans to deploy ground troops in Libya, but that the United States would not wait to see if Islamic State starts to gain a foothold there.
- For the first time since the US launched the so-called War on Terror, two former CIA contractors are in federal court; psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who designed the CIA’s torture programme, are trying to get a judge to throw out the lawsuit filed on behalf of some of the men who were tortured.
Oceania
- Australia ready to partner with Africa to advance human rights.
UN/World
- China and the United States, the world’s top producers of greenhouse gas emissions, pledged on Friday to formally adopt by the end of the year a Paris deal to slow global warming, raising the prospects of it being enforced much faster than anticipated.
- Gianni Infantino, FIFA’s president, has announced plans to set up an independent committee that will monitor conditions for labourers working at Qatar’s World Cup 2022 stadiums following criticism of the country’s human-rights record.
- The top U.N. human rights official called on Thailand on Friday to suspend “dangerously sweeping” powers handed to the military and he encouraged dialogue on a draft constitution the military hopes will win approval in an August referendum.
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