Welcome to the weekly world briefing, a new Tuesday feature to help you stay up to date with major happenings around the globe. Come across something you think should be added to the next briefing? Send it to us on Twitter.
North & Central America
Towns across the Florida panhandle are in ruins following last week’s Category 4 Hurricane. Hurricane Michael was one of the strongest hurricanes in U.S. history, leaving Mexico Beach, Fla., so devastated that some residents are considering moving away permanently. The death toll was 19 as of Tuesday morning.
Though there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the U.S., the issue remains contentious. Many Republican legislatures have enacted laws to prevent voter fraud while Democrats argue those laws are a ruse to prevent mostly poor people and minorities from voting. In this year’s midterm elections, the fight is most evident in Georgia where candidates Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams have been at odds about voting rights for years. As Secretary of State, Republican Kemp enacted an “exact match” law that scrutinizes voting applications down to punctuation errors. If the applications do not exactly match other government files, they are put on hold. The Abrams-funded New Georgia Project has challenged the law in court. With the news that 53,000 Georgians are on the “pending” list, voting rights are taking center stage with midterms just weeks away.
Canada is set to become the second country to legalize the recreational use of marijuana tomorrow. Following Uruguay’s lead, the country of 37 million will open over 100 weed shops this week, and begin regulating and taxing the product. While the drug will be legal everywhere, provinces have been given the authority to regulate it as each sees fit. Residents of Ontario will not see an open store until April, while Albertans can expect 17 stores this week.
A caravan of over 1600 Hondurans is making its way through Guatemala in hopes of reaching the United States, despite warnings from the U.S. that they will be rejected at the border. Families within the caravan are hoping its size wards off Mexican gangs that prey on immigrants. Earlier this year, the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy resulted in high-profile family separations. This week, the Guardian released a comprehensive look into how the policy affected migrants.
South America
Students and professors in Colombia took to the streets last week to demand more investment in public education. The public student population in Colombia increased 284 percent between 1993 and 2016, yet investment lagged behind inflation. Protesters also demanded interest-free student loans.
As Argentina grapples with the consequences of taking the largest IMF bailout in history, some worry economic uncertainty will spread throughout the region. IMF bailouts are loans that need to be paid back with interest. So, why do countries ever agree to an IMF loan? For those of us who tend to breeze by economic news without much thought, here’s a helpful explanation.
Europe
Chief Brexit officials failed to agree on a draft settlement over the weekend, just days before a big EU summit. London and Brussels were blocked over the issue of the Northern Irish border, specifically on the issue of trade to and from Northern Ireland. Britain is set to leave the European bloc at the end of March, and European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker had demanded “substantial progress” ahead of the October summit. Some think the Northern Ireland issue could be a deal breaker, and possibly even a threat to British Prime Minister Theresa May’s leadership.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative sister party suffered major losses in Bavaria’s state election, but not to the far-right party that dominated the news last year. This time, the pro-refugee Greens took second place with nearly 17.5% of the vote. The CSU party took 37% of the vote, more than 10% less than in the 2013 election. The results raised new doubts about Merkel’s ruling coalition and suggest the country is moving away from big political parties. The Greens ran on a platform of fighting against climate change, open borders, and liberal values.
Middle East
The Saudi government is preparing a new narrative for what happened to journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who in his Washington Post columns was critical of the government and disappeared after stepping into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Turkey has said Khashoggi was murdered, something Saudi Arabia denies. Now, the kingdom is preparing to say his death was the result of an interrogation gone wrong. Meanwhile, some of the biggest names in business have pulled out of a major Saudi investment conference next week because of the disappearance. Known as “Davos in the Desert,” the conference is part of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s attempt to move Saudi’s economy away from oil dependence. JP Morgan, Blackrock and Blackstone, Ford, MasterCard, and Google executives have all cancelled their attendance. On the European side, the CEOs of Credit Suisse, HSBC, and Standard Chartered pulled out of the conference. President Donald Trump first threatened “severe punishment” to Saudi Arabia if it was found to have killed Khashoggi, but on Monday said Salman “firmly denied any knowledge” of the killing, and suggested “rogue killers” were involved. The U.S. relies on Saudi Arabia for oil (it possesses about 18% of the world’s supply and is the world’s largest exporter), military contracts (it has the third largest defense budget in the world), maintaining security in the Middle East, to counter the influence of Iran, and for trade and investment, which totaled $46 billion in 2017. In light of these events, a Qatari human rights organization is demanding an explanation for four Qatari citizens who have disappeared in Saudi Arabia since May.
As the conflict in Yemen continues, the UN warns that 3.5 million more Yemenis could be at risk of starvation. The report warns that 40 percent of Yemenis could be on the brink of famine unless conditions change. Meanwhile, Yemen’s president fired the prime minister this week due to the economic crisis. Most of northern Yemen is currently controlled by Houthi rebels.
Central & South Asia
U.S. Senators John Cornyn and Mark Warner are urging India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to soften his country’s stance on data localization. As of now, Mastercard, Visa, and other global payment companies should be storing transactions on servers located in India, according to a deadline set by the Reserve Bank of India. The U.S. senators say this could present “key trade barriers,” as companies could not also store data offshore.
The Indian government has asked states to identify Rohingya refugees and report them to the central administration, which would for many refugees mean deportation to Myanmar. Some refugees are refusing to fill out biometric data forms and most fear returning to Myanmar, where they say they will be jailed, put in concentration camps, or killed. An estimated 40,000 Rohingya live in India. The Indian government has refused to grant them refugee status, though groups like Amnesty International and the United Nations have urged the country to provide humanitarian assistance. Meanwhile, the Myanmar military used Facebook as a tool for ethnic cleansing, according to researchers and former officials. Facebook confirmed many of the details.
East & Southeast Asia
In a meeting on Monday, North and South Korea agreed to reopen roads and railways between the two countries that have been closed since the 1950s. The two countries also discussed a joint bid to host the 2032 Olympics. Though the two nations have been increasingly agreeable over the last few weeks, the U.S. is wary that some of the agreements are undermining the plan to denuclearize the peninsula.
Japan is launching a survey to investigate overtourism. The study aims to find ways for locals and tourists to coexist. In 2018, Japan is expected to have over 30 million visitors for the first time. Read how overtourism is affecting regions around the world.
Africa
Over the last decade, Chinese investment in Africa has led to large-scale infrastructure projects. But with the investment comes debt and sometimes exploitative labor practices. Now, in Kenya, instances of racism are rising. In a video that went viral last month, a Chinese boss is recorded comparing Kenyans to primates. While the man was deported to China, the problems persist. Many younger Kenyans who say they have never experienced racism before report being called monkeys, being forced to use separate bathrooms from the Chinese workers, and more.
Protests erupted this week in Comoros after President Azali Assoumani announced his plan to extend presidential term limits. By law, the presidency rotates between the nation’s three islands every five years. The new law, approved by a referendum which the opposition deemed illegal, would allow Assoumani to run for two more five-year terms.
Two suicide bombings in the Somalian city of Baidoa left 16 people dead over the weekend. The attack came on the one-year anniversary of a suicide bombing in Mogadishu that killed 587 people. Somalia continues to be plagued by violence from the extremist Al-Shabaab group.
Other
Two studies released this week added more bad news to the UN’s dire warnings of a climate catastrophe to come. The first came from Puerto Rico, where the biomass of anthropods – invertebrate animals such as insects – has declined by as much as 60 fold since 1976. “Our results suggest that the effects of climate warming in tropical forests may be even greater than anticipated,” said the lead author of the study. Two-thirds of the Earth’s species live in rainforests. But it’s not just rainforests that are in danger. Another study found it may take 5 million years for nature to fill the gaps left by man-made mass extinctions.
