General Awareness

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS - May 2019

May 2019

May 12, 2019

May Will Clarify Plan for Resignation

As per the leader of backbench lawmakers in her governing Conservative Party, British Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to set out her departure plans within days.
Graham Brady said that he expected Ms. May to provide clarity on her exit timetable at a meeting with him later in May.

May 11, 2019

Remains of Nazi Victims to be Buried in Berlin

More than seven decades after the end of World War II, the remains of political prisoners executed by the Nazis and dissected for research will be given a proper burial in Berlin.
The microscopic remains, 300 tissue samples each a hundredth of a millimetre thin and around one by one centimetre large, were uncovered by the descendants of the late Hermann Stieve, an anatomist who worked on the bodies of Third Reich opponents.
Such small tissue samples are usually not deemed worthy of burial.
But this is a special story, because they came from people who were actively denied graves so that their relatives would not know where they are buried.

May 10, 2019

Panel Holds Barr in Contempt

The House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend that the House hold Attorney General William P. Barr in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over Robert Mueller's unredacted report, hours after President Donald Trump asserted executive privilege to shield the full report and underlying evidence from Congress.
The committee's 24-16 contempt vote, taken after hours of debate over the future of American democracy, was the first official House action to punish a government official in the stand-off over the Mueller report.

China Will Not Capitulate to U.S. Pressure

China rejected U.S. accusations of backtracking in trade talks and warned that it would not capitulate to any pressure as the two sides headed into make-or-break negotiations.
The United States has raised the stakes with plans to increase tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods from 10% to 25%, prompting Beijing to vow to hit back with necessary countermeasures.

Singapore Passes Fake News Law

Singapore's parliament passed an anti-fake news bill that has been criticised by rights groups, journalists and tech firms over fears it could be used to clamp down on freedom of speech.
The law will require online media platforms to carry corrections or remove content the government considers to be false, with penalties for perpetrators running as high as prison terms of up to 10 years or fines up to S$1 million ($735,000).
The Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation passed the bill with 72 members voting in favour. All nine opposition lawmakers voted against it, local media reported.
Three nominated members of parliament, who are appointed directly by the president and not affiliated to political parties, all abstained.

Ruling ANC Takes Comfortable Lead

The ruling African National Congress (ANC) held a comfortable lead with more than half the votes counted from South Africa's presidential and parliamentary election, but it received much lower support than in the last ballot five years ago.
Opposition parties made widespread allegations of corruption against the ruling ANC party a major part of their campaigns ahead of the vote and voter apathy also appears to have affected turnout, which fell to 65% from 74% in 2014.
According to results announced by the Electoral Commission, the ANC, led by President Cyril Ramaphosa, won 57% of the votes with 60% of the polling districts counted.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) received 22% of the vote so far, the most of any Opposition party.

US Seizes North Korean Ship

The United States has for the first time seized a North Korean cargo ship it accused of illicit coal shipments in violation of US and United Nations sanctions.
The ship, known as the "Wise Honest," was first detained by Indonesia in April 2018.
Under an unusual US civil forfeiture action, the vessel is now in the possession of the United States and is currently approaching US territorial waters heading toward American Samoa.

Bolsonaro Relaxes Brazil's Gun Laws

Truckers, lawyers and politicians are among millions of Brazilians eligible to carry loaded weapons in public under President Jair Bolsonaro's decree relaxing gun laws.
As per the order, people from a wide range of professions, including hunters, farmers and even certain journalists, are now allowed to carry guns.

May 09, 2019

Iran Rolls Back Part of Nuclear Pact

Iran said that it had started scaling back parts of its commitments under its 2015 nuclear deal on Wednesday and threatened to do more if world powers did not protect it from U.S. sanctions, a year after Washington pulled out of the pact.
President Hassan Rouhani said that Tehran would move on to resuming high level uranium enrichment if the remaining signatories - Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia - did not make good on promises to shield its oil and banking sectors in the next 60 days.
France`s defence minister said that he wanted to keep the nuclear deal alive but warned Iran it could face more sanctions if it did not honour its part of the deal.

Asia Bibi Leaves Pakistan

Asia Bibi, a Christian woman acquitted by the Supreme Court in a blasphemy case in 2018, left Pakistan.
Her counsel, Saiful Malook, confirmed that Bibi had left Pakistan and reached Canada. While US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said that Bibi is free and has been reunited with her family, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declined to say if she is in Canada, citing "sensitive privacy issues and security issues.
The allegations against Bibi were made in June 2009 when she was labouring in a field and a row broke out with some Muslim women she was working with.

May 08, 2019

Britain to Hold Elections to EU Parliament

Britain will now be forced to hold elections to the European Parliament on May 23, a situation that Prime Minister Theresa May had hoped would not arise if MPs were able to agree on a Brexit agreement.
Having to hold the elections in a bitterly divided member-state that has already voted to leave the European Union reflects the failure of Westminster politics that jostled for nearly three years on leaving the bloc.
May has been dealing with voices in her party against her leadership and trying to reach a consensus with the opposition Labour on the Brexit agreement.

Myanmar Frees Retuers Journalists

Two Reuters journalists jailed for their reporting on the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar walked out of prison, freed in a presidential amnesty after a vigorous global campaign - and back room diplomacy - for their release.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were mobbed by the media as they stepped out of Yangon's Insein prison after more than 16 months in detention.
Stories based on their reporting were published while they were in prison and the two last month were part of a Reuters team that won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, one of journalism's highest honours.
Their December 2017 arrests made them an international cause celebre and a sign of Myanmar's deteriorating press freedoms under Nobel laureate and civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
They were freed in an amnesty that included more than 6,000 prisoners.
The duo were convicted on charges of violating the Official Secrets Act and sentenced to seven years each.
At the time of their arrest, they had been reporting on a September 2017 massacre of 10 Rohingya Muslims in conflict-hit Rakhine state, where the Myanmar army forced some 740,000 to flee to Bangladesh.

Application Fee for H1B Visas Set to be Increased

The Trump administration proposes to double a component of the filing fee for H-1Bs, a visa programme popular among Indians hoping to work and live in the United States, that could push up costs by $750 or $1,500 for each application, depending on the size of the employer company.
The proposed hike is for a fee the US charges for each H-1B application to fund a training programme for Americans for jobs currently been performed by foreign workers, especially in the so-called STEM sectors that comprise science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
It is currently $750 each for petitions filed by an employer with 25 or fewer full-time employees, and $1,500 for employers with 26 or more.
The plan is to double it to $1,500 and $3,000 respectively, through a legislation, which, typically, could take time.
Called the ACWAI fee — named after American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act, a 1998 law aimed at reducing the need for foreign workers — is 13% of the total H-1B fee.
The rest are a $460 basic fee, $500 anti-fraud fee, $4,000 fee for employers that have more than 50 workers with half or more of them on H-1B or L-1 (for intra-company trans85,000 fers).
For premium 15-day processing, which is optional, the fee is $ 1,410. Employers pay these charges. These is no proposal to change these other charges.
The H-1B programme allows US-based companies to employ foreign workers for high speciality jobs on temporary non-immigrant visas.
There is an annual cap of on the number of these visas, more than 70% of which have gone to Indians, hired both by US companies such as Microsoft Corporation, Facebook,Google and US-branches of Indian companies such as Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services.

Chinese Team Heads To US to Salvage Trade Deal

Efforts to end a US-China trade war are in shambles after the US accused China of reneging on its commitments and prepared to raise import taxes on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.
A Chinese delegation is headed to Washington to salvage talks aimed at resolving a dispute over China's aggressive push to challenge American technological dominance.
China confirmed its economy czar, vice-premier Liu He, will lead China's delegation, ending speculation that he'd skip the talks or that the Chinese team would back out altogether.
The announcement suggests President Xi Jinping's government is putting its desire to end a conflict that has battered Chinese exporters ahead of the political need to look tough in the face of US pressure.
The decision to have Liu take part in talks might keep alive hopes the two biggest global economies could make peace.
The American side is led by trade representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

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