Compass World: Funding Peace
Breaking News
Google Vice President of News Richard Gingras told the Guardian that if the European Union adopts a proposed copyright rule, Google may be forced to stop offering its Google News service in the Europe. The draft regulation would require Google and other news aggregators and platforms to compensate the owners of content that appears in its search results. Google stopped offering its news platform in Spain in 2014 when the country passed a similar law.
Latin America & the Caribbean
Cut Down the Tall Trees
Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro has appointed Ernesto Araújo as the new foreign minister. Araújo was previously the director of the office of Foreign Ministry that oversees the U.S. and Canada. The appointment has seriously worried the global environmentalist community, as Araújo has claimed in the past that climate change is a hoax created by “cultural Marxists” in order to stunt the growth of Western economies and benefit China. Bolsonaro has already threatened to pull out of the Paris Agreement, but he has backtracked on that statement since realizing it might hurt Brazilian soya and beef sales in Europe. Bolsonaro has also recently appointed Tereza Cristina Dias as agriculture minister. She has been called the Muse of Poison for her lax stance on agro-toxins, which can damage the soil and environment.
Indo-Asia-Pacific
Bainimarama Drama
In a hotly contested general election in Fiji, incumbent Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama and his FijiFirst Party barely won an outright majority in the 51-seat parliament with 50.02 percent of the vote. In only the second election since Bainimarama toppled the prior government in a coup in 2006, he was able to maintain control of the country, albeit with a 10 percent smaller margin than in 2014. In this year’s elections, which a multinational observer group lauded for its fairness, SODELPA, led by former military strongman Sitiventi Rabuka, won 39.85 percent of the vote to become the main opposition party, and the National Federation Party came in third with 7.38 percent. Opposition parties, however, are claiming that provisional results released earlier did not correspond with the results collected by their own agents. Bainimarama ran on the promise of continued economic prosperity and political stability, along with better social services, and will now be at the helm for at least the next four years.
Middle East & Central Asia
Toil for Oil
The Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) government have agreed to resume exporting oil from the disputed territory to Turkey. This agreement comes after the Iraqi government seized Kirkuk from the KRI after a 2017 referendum to secede from Iraq. Baghdad, along with neighbors Turkey and Iran, condemned the referendum, but the KRI proceeded anyway. After backlash from all three governments, this new truce marks a return to peace in the region.
Courtesy of Bloomberg
Eastern Europe & Russia
Hung(a)ry for Controversy
Albanian police have confirmed reports that Hungarian diplomats helped the Former Yugoslav Republic of Maceondia’s former-prime minister, Nikola Gruevski, to travel through the Balkans and claim asylum in Budapest earlier this week. Gruevski, who has been convicted of corruption and was set to begin a jail sentence, reportedly crossed into Montenegro inside a car registered to the Hungarian embassy in Tirana. Montenegrin police confirmed that Gruevski entered the country along with two Hungarian diplomats, a deputy ambassador and a consul. The U.S. and EU have expressed concerns over Hungary’s actions and called for Gruevski to be fairly tried in Macedonia.
Africa
Funding Peace
Under the direction of Rwandan President and rotating Chair of the African Union (AU) Paul Kagame, the body unanimously adopted new rules that provide a mechanism for funding AU operations. The reforms were part of a package of reforms first proposed by Kagame when he assumed the chairship. The AU established a Peace Fund intended to pay for responses to brewing conflict on the continent and head-off more serious wars. The Peace Fund is paid for by a 0.2 percent tariff on imports that will be implemented by 24 of the AU’s members. The U.S. mission to the AU said the levy violates World Trade Organization rules. At the same time, the AU heads of state rejected Kagame’s proposal to create a strong executive for the organization modeled on the European Commission.
Western Europe & Canada
Rocky Relations
In light of British Prime Minister Theresa May’s draft Brexit deal, the Spanish government has threatened to withhold support for the proposal unless it received assurances that the agreement will not apply to Gibraltar. Gibraltar, over which the Spanish have long resented British rule, has put the two governments on opposing sides. Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell wants the United Kingdom to uphold last year’s special clause that held Gibraltar negotiations independent of Britain’s negotiations with the EU. Despite supporting Britain's exit plans thus far, Spain’s relations with the United Kingdom are growing more fraught.
Writing contributed by Stephen Cho, Agnieszka Krotzer, and Camilla Wasiak.