World News Briefs For Sunday, 30 October 2016
Hello Australia!! - Hillary demands the FBI explain itself - Yemen's exiled leader rejects peace - Officials were warned that a bridge might collapse jsut hours before it crushed a driver - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:
Hillary Clinton's campaign says the FBI is "light on facts and heavy on innuendo", and is demanding the FBI release more information on emails that "may" be related to the former Secretary of State. FBI director James Comey threw a stink bomb into the last days of the US Presidential campaign with the intentionally vague announcement of supposedly "new" emails found on a device belonging to sex-fiend former congressman Anthony Wiener, who is currently getting divorced from Clinton's top aide Huma Abedin. However, officials have acknowledged that the emails are not from Hillary Clinton at all, and it appears Comey has taken the unprecedented step of publicly politicizing his office in an election year. There are calls for him to explain himself, while others are demanding he resign.
Shiite militias fighting alongside the Iraqi military launched a new attack on a key Islamic State outpost. Recapturing Tal Afar from IS would cut jihadist supply routes to Mosul, the main focus of the push, and from Syria. Mosul is a Sunni Muslim city, and the Shiites have vowed not to enter it; Tal Afar, however, was predominantly Shiite before IS moved in two years ago. Only a few thousand IS terrorists remain in Mosul as more than 30,000 Iraqi troops plus Shiite militias come from the south and Kurdish Peshmerga hold the north. The problem is that hundreds of thousands of civilians are in between them.
Yemen's president has turned down a peace proposal from the United Nations. From exile in the Saudi capital Riyadh, Abed-Rabbo Mansour Hadi claims the deal "rewards" the Houthi rebels who forced him out two years ago. This defiance comes despite ambassadors from the United States, France, China, and Russia putting intense pressure on Hadi and his prime minister to take the deal.
OPEC met with representatives of six other oil producing countries to talk about cutting production to raise prices. A statement from the cartel referred to Saturday's meetings as "fruitful and constructive discussions". For the past few years, the Saudis have kept production high to cut into US shale oil market. The US doesn't mind this, because low oil prices screws with troublesome competitors like Russia and Venezuela, and low petrol prices are good politics for US presidents. The cartel has a formal conference on 30 November.
Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy won enough votes to keep his job abd head off a third national election in year. Ten months of political stalemate ended when moderates in the hilariously misnamed Socialist Party threw in the towel, fired their chief, and said Rajoy's loathed conservative (and equally misnamed) Popular Party could rule with a minority government. The two moribund main parties can't win clear majorities anymore and the upstart Podemos (Left) and Ciudadanos (right) have sapped their support.
A driver was killed when a bridge collapsed in northern Italy near Milan - and it was caught on video. Italy road authority Anas says it asked local authorities to immediately close the bridge on the afternoon of the crashed when one of its workers spotted a problem, but provincial officials delayed and demanded more information. Three hours later, an overloaded truck attempted to cross the bridge, collapsing into at least one car below.
Boko Haram is suspected in vehicle bombs that killed seven people and injured dozens more in Maidugari, in Nigeria's northeast near Boko Haram's stronghold. The suicide attackers were driving motorized rickshaws.
At least 25 people died in clashes between Muslim Seleka rebels and Christian Anti-Balaka vigilantes in the Central African Republic.
Thousands of people rallied in Seoul to demand the resignation of President Park Geun-hye. This comes after Ms. Park ordered ten senior advisers to quit after admitting she had allowed an old friend with dodgy family connections to a religious cult to edit political speeches. On Saturday, prosecutors raided the homes of seven other aides, carrying off paperwork and computers.
Chile is seeking UNESCO World Heritage status for the Chinchorro archeological site, where mummies as old as 7,000 years have been recovered from the aged. This would make the most aged human remains the oldest on earth, predating Egypt's mummies. World Heritage status would get extra money for the University of Tarapaca in the northern city of Arica to preserve the mummies, and more technology to study them.