(Current Affairs) International Events | January: 2015

International Events

U.S. air strikes target IS convoy in Iraq

  • U.S. air strikes destroyed an Islamic State convoy near the Iraqi city of Mosul but U.S. officials said it was unclear whether the group’s top commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been in any of the 10 targeted vehicles.

  • Colonel Patrick Ryder, a Central Command spokesman, said the U.S. military had reason to believe that the convoy was carrying leaders of Islamic State, an al-Qaeda offshoot which controls large chunks of Iraq and Syria.

  • The convoy consisted of 10 Islamic State armed trucks.

  • “I can confirm that coalition aircraft did conduct a series of air strikes in Iraq against what was assessed to be a gathering of ISIL leaders near Mosul,” said Colonel Ryder, using another name for Islamic State.

  • “We cannot confirm if ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was among those present.” Islamic State had been changing its strategy since the air strikes began, switching to lower profile vehicles to avoid being targeted, according to residents of towns the group holds.

  • A Mosul morgue official said 50 bodies of Islamic State militants were brought to the facility after the air strike.

  • Mosul, northern Iraq’s biggest city, was overrun on June 10 in an offensive that saw vast parts of Iraq’s Sunni regions fall to the Islamic State and allied groups.

  • A month later a video posted online purported to show the reclusive Baghdadi preaching at Mosul’s grand mosque. Al-Hadath television channel said U.S.-led air strikes targeted a gathering of Islamic State leaders in a town near the Syrian border, possibly including Baghdadi.

  • Iraqi security officials were not immediately available for comment on the report from the station, part of Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television, but two witnesses told Reuters an air strike targeted a house where senior Islamic State officers were meeting, near the western Iraqi border town of al-Qaim.

There is an attempt to create a chilling effect: Kumi Naidoo

  • As a young man growing up in South Africa, Kumi Naidoo looked to India for inspiration. Now there is a twinge of disappointment. Mr. Naidoo, the executive director of Greenpeace International, is puzzled at how the government came to freeze the organisation’s bank accounts in India without giving a reason.

  • Though the Delhi High Court sent a notice to the Ministry of Home Affairs directing it to unblock Greenpeace India’s foreign funds, there is no respite with the Ministry asking for more details on remittances from abroad.

  • Mr Naidoo is in India to discuss the role of civil society in the context of certain individual and non-governmental organisations (NGO) being targeted for being “anti-national”.

  • He said, “Thankfully Greenpeace India is quintessentially an Indian entity, with 60 per cent of our resources coming from individual Indian citizens and 40 per cent from Greenpeace International.”

  • After the government’s move, Mr. Naidoo sought solace in Mahatma Gandhi. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win. We are not panicking because of Gandhiji.

  • We take comfort in this that we are being fought and we are one step away from winning the argument for a different development model which includes sustainable meaning for growth,” he said. Mr Naidoo has asked for a meeting with the Home department and the Environment Minister.

  • It’s a bit disappointing for me to see what’s happening in India. As a young person growing up in South Africa, we looked to India as a bastion of democracy- no country supported us as much as India politically and in terms of skills development. I first came in 1989 first time to India as part of an African National Congress (ANC) delegation.

Nuclear Reactors to reactivate in Japan

  • The Governor of Japan’s Kagoshima prefecture approved the reactivation of two nuclear reactors at the Sendai plant.

  • Sendai was the first plant in Japan on which new regulations were imposed by Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority after the accident at the Fukushima plant triggered by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.

  • The plant is expected to start its commercial activities from 2015 after the NRA completes its last security reviews in Sendai.

  • The approval granted is almost the final step for the reactivation of the power stations, whose 48 commercial-use reactors are non-functional until they adopt the NRA norms.

Russia signs another mega-energy agreement with China

  • Russia pivoted decisively towards the East, after signing another mega-energy agreement with China, which could dwarf Europe as the largest consumer of Russian gas once the project is completed.

  • Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fifth meeting in a year with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference (APEC), yielded an agreement that seemed to rebuff Europe, which had imposed sanctions on Russia following the crisis in Ukraine.

  • China would receive 30 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year along the so-called “western” or “Altay” route, according to the agreement. This would supplement the proposed 38 bcm Russian gas to China that would flow through the “Power of Siberia” pipeline, passing along the “eastern route”.

  • The “eastern route” deal, worth $400 billion, was signed in May, and work on the project has already commenced.

US, China unveil ambitious goals to cut pollution levels

  • The United States and China unveiled ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gases, aiming to inject fresh momentum into the global fight against climate change ahead of a make-or-break treaty to be finalized next year.

  • President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. would move much faster in cutting pollution, with a goal to reduce by 26 per cent to 28 per cent by 2025, compared with 2005 levels. Earlier in his presidency, Mr. Obama set a goal to cut emissions by 17 per cent by 2020.

  • Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose country’s emissions are still growing as it builds new coal plants, didn’t commit to cut emissions by a specific amount.

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