Page 53 - English Tehelka Issue 3&4

around the w rLd Here is a round-up of international news to update our readers on everything

important that’s happening in different parts of the world.

Bloody militant attacks intensify violence after he was barred from running for the presidency believed to have been in
the main hospital building,
because of legal problems that he has alleged have
in war-torn Afghanistan; several killed been manufactured to prevent his candidacy. Navalny and 94 in the nursing
was detained before he reached the several thousand
home annex. Firefighters
demonstrators gathered in Pushkin Square in central
evacuated patients from
Moscow and other main avenues closer to the Kremlin. and hospital workers
Video footage showed police officers, who over all were an annex that operated
far more restrained than during previous demonstrations, as a nursing home for the
At leAst three high- federal government tackling him and dragging him onto a bus. elderly, carrying some of
intensity militant attacks effectively closed its them on their backs. In
were experienced in Kabul doors. The shutdown, South Korea, a country
during what is being the nineteenth one in with one of the world’s
called an intense period the country’s history, In the Czech Republic, fastest-aging populations, the lack of safety measures at
of violence in the Afghan led to the furlough of the presidential election its growing number of nursing homes has become a major
capital. At least 20 people hundreds of thousands was won by incumbent issue in recent years. The fire in Miryang, about 275 km
were killed in an attack on of government workers, Milos Zeman, known for southeast of Seoul, was the second major deadly fire in
Kabul’s largest hotel, The closure of national parks his often-caustic brand South Korea in recent weeks. Twenty-nine people were
Intercontinental, when an with a potential loss of of populism that has killed and 40 injured in a fire that gutted a sports centre
armed group stormed the hundreds of millions stoked resentment toward in the town of Jecheon, about 120 km southeast of Seoul,
hotel, trapping hundreds of dollars in revenue, Muslim immigrants and in December.
of guests during the fighting that raged all night. Days and a possible overall macroeconomic cost of several ruptured the country’s
later, at least 41 people were killed and over 140 others billions of dollars in terms of productivity loss associated relationship with its allies
were injured when a bomb hidden in an ambulance with the cessation of multiple public services. Services to the west. He received
went off at a police checkpoint in the capital city in an such as national security, electricity generation and air 51.4 percent of the votes. hong Kong has disqualified a 21-year-old democracy
area near foreign offices and government buildings. The traffic control continued to operate. On January 23, the In recent years, 73-year-old Zeman has strengthened advocate from running for the local legislature, the latest
Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks. Militants Senate passed a short-term spending bill to reopen the the country’s ties with Russia and has courted China. His in a series of young politicians to be barred from public
also attacked an army unit near Afghanistan’s main government. opponent, Jiri Drahos, a political novice whose views were office over their resistance to the Chinese government’s
military university, killing at least 11 Afghan soldiers and not well known, sought to present himself as an antidote authority over the city. The pro-democracy party
wounding 16 others, for which the Islamic State’s local to what he characterized as Zeman’s bitter and divisive Demosisto said that election authorities had barred
affiliate in Afghanistan took responsibility. The attack leadership. 68-year-old Drahos, who got 48.6 per cent of its candidate, Agnes Chow, from running in a March
embody the trends toward violence and disintegration Protesters Across Russia braved icy temperatures the votes cast, had offered a firm commitment not just to by-election, in which Hong Kong voters will decide on
that appear to be only worsening in Afghanistan, where to demonstrate against the lack of choice in the March the country’s membership in the European Union, but also the members of the Legislative Council. Hong Kong’s
war between US-backed military forces and Taliban election that is virtually to the bloc’s values. In rejecting his vision, the country was government said that
militants has been going on for over 16 years. certain to see President poised to continue in the same euroskeptic direction as its a legislator “cannot
Vladimir V. Putin neighbors Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. possibly uphold” the city’s
chosen for a fourth de facto constitution,
term. The protests in the Basic Law — which
the Us federal government faced a shutdown for three scores of cities — from says that Hong Kong
days. The cause of the government coming to a standstill Vladivostok in the east At leAst 37 people were killed and over 70 in cured, is an inalienable part
was that a spending bill, called an appropriations bill to Kaliningrad in the most of them seriously, in a fire at a hospital in South of China — if he or she
in US political parlance, pertaining to immigration west — were called by Korea’s southern city of Miryang, the latest in a string of “advocates or promotes
had to be passed by Congress and signed by President Aleksei A. Navalny, tragedies that have heightened public concern over the self-determination or
Donald Trump by midnight on January 19, which did an anti-corruption country’s safety standards. The fire erupted in the Sejong independence by any
not happen, and without an agreement on spending the opposition leader, Hospital’s main building. At least 100 patients were means.”

Tehelka / 28 february 2018 52 www.Tehelka.com Tehelka / 28 february 2018 53 www.Tehelka.com

52-53 World News.indd 2-3 12/02/18 3:52 PM