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World in Brief: 28/04/14

ETHIOPIA: Rights groups called on the government today to release six bloggers and three journalists who were arrested last week.

Human Rights Watch urged US Secretary of State John Kerry, who visits Ethiopia today, to add his voice to the call.

Amnesty International noted that 20 members of a political opposition group were also arrested last week.

The rights charity said Ethiopia was tightening “its suffocating grip on freedom of expression.”

 

 

YEMEN: Thousands rallied in the port city of Mukalla on Sunday to demand statehood for the formerly independent south.

The rally was organised by the Southern Movement which is clamouring for renewed independence, 20 years after a civil war ended with the south’s occupation by northern troops.

The movement rejects plans for a federation in which two regions are planned for the south.

 

 

SYRIA: President Bashar al-Assad declared himself a candidate for re-election as president today.

The country will go to the polls on June 3 and Mr Assad is widely expected to secure a third term in office.

A handful of others have announced their candidacy, but Syria’s opposition leaders in exile, who are barred from standing, have dismissed the vote as a charade.

 

 

NETHERLANDS: Greenpeace International said today that it was sending a ship to Rotterdam in protest at the arrival of a tanker bringing the first oil from a new Russian Arctic offshore platform.

Rainbow Warrior III will meet the Mikhail Ulyanov.

In September, 28 of the group’s activists were arrested and charged with piracy after a protest near Gazprom’s Prirazlomnaya platform. 

They were released earlier this year, but their ship Arctic Sunrise is still held by Russian authorities.

 

 

IRAQ: A suicide bomber killed at least four policemen and wounded 11 people at a polling centre in Baghdad today.

Iraqi army and police personnel were voting for a new parliament yesterday, two days before the rest of the nation’s 22 million registered voters go to the polls.

The early balloting is meant to free up military and security forces to protect polling stations and voters tomorrow.

 

 

MACEDONIA: Right-wing incumbent Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski claimed a landslide victory in parliamentary and presidential elections on Sunday night. 

But the centre-left opposition said it would not recognise the results.

Social Democrat leader Zoran Zaev claimed that Mr Gruevski’s government had unfairly used state resources to influence the campaign and that civil servants were pressured to vote for the ruling conservatives or face the sack.

 

 

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: Global news agency Al-Jazeera filed a claim against Egypt today demanding £89 million in compensation for alleged damages to its Egyptian investments since July.

The Qatar-based network said that it lodged a formal “notification of dispute” with Egypt’s interim government based on a bilateral investment treaty between Qatar and Egypt.

It added it would seek international arbitration if it the two sides did not reach a settlement within six months.

 

 

POLAND: Thousands of young Jews from around the world marched between the two parts of the Auschwitz-Birkenau nazi death camp today. 

The annual silent march began when the shofar, a ram’s horn, sounded by the camp’s notorious gate.

Holding Israeli flags and dressed in blue rain jackets, the participants walked the two miles from the gate to a memorial in Birkenau, where Hungarian President Janos Ader made a speech to honour the victims.

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