The Economist august 17th-23rd 2013 [antikvár]

The world this week The Economist August 17th 2013 Politics Security forces in Egypt opened fire on two sit-ins in Cairo, where supporters of the ousted Islamist president, Muhammad Morsi, had heen protesting against the government installed hy an army-led coup. Hundreds of people were killed in the crackdown (estimates of the actual death toll rose rapidly). The government declared a state of emergency Mohamed ElBaradei, a prominent secular figure, resigned as vice-president. Peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians resumed in Jerusalem for the first time in three years. As a preliminary gesture, 26 longtime Palestinian prisoners were set free. In one of the worst waves of sectarian violence since 2008, at least 100 Iraqis, nearly all of them civilians, were killed in a string of bombings during and after the Eid celebrations that marked the end of Ramadan. In one incident, a suicide-bomber killed at least 16 people in a crowded café in Balad, north of Baghdad. Gunmen presumed to belong to Boko Haram, an extreme Islamist group, stormed a mosque in Konduga, a town in the north-eastern Nigerian state of Borno, killing 44 people, according to the government. It was suggested that the action was intended to deter Muslims from joining pro-government vigilante groups opposed to the extremists. Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, a former prime minister, was elected president of Mali in a run-off against Soumaila Cissé, a former finance min-ster. After an initial claim of vote-rigging, Mr Cissé gracefully accepted the result. Crude measures Mexico's president, Enrique Pena Nieto, proposed constitutional changes to the country's energy industry that would allow private companies to explore for and drill for oil for the first time since i960. Mr Pena's reforms would allow foreign firms to set up profit-sharing partnerships with Pemex, the huge state-run oil company, though Mexico will still officially own the extracted commodity. Colombia's government and the country's f arc rebels said they had made good progress as their latest round of peace talks ended in Havana. The killing of a senior f arc leader by the army in western Colombia had jangled nerves, but both sides remain optimistic that a deal will be struck. Mariners' tragedy An explosion on board an Indian navy submarine that was berthed in a Mumbai dockyard killed 18 sailors. The Russian-built vessel had been refurbished only recently. Just before the explosion India had celebrated the launch of the country's first aircraft-carrier tobe buihin an Indian shipyard. India and Pakistan blamed each other for the latest spike in tension over the Kashmir border. India accused Pakistan of shooting at its positions and Pakistan said a civilian had been killed when India opened fire at it. India recently said that five of its soldiers had been killed in an ambush on the border. Meanwhile, a curfew was imposed in Indi- an-administered Kashmir when trouble flared between Hindus and Mushms, leaving three people dead. Buddhists stoned a mosque in Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, forcing it to close. Rehgious strains have risen in Sri Lanka over the past year as Buddhist extremists among the country's Sinhalese majority step up their attacks on Muslim businesses and places of worship. Campaigners handed a petition to Downing Street calhng for all Afghan interpreters who worked for the British army to be allowed to settle in Britain. Only those who were on staff in December, when Britain announced a drawdown of forces, are being allowed to resettle. It is feared that those who are left behind will be targeted by the Taliban. No sir, Mr President The Czech government resigned after the prime minister, Jiri Rusnok, failed to win a confidence vote in parliament. Mr Rusnok was chosen as prime minister against parUament's wishes by the president, Milos Zeman, in June. The political deadlock is Hkely to lead to an early election this autumn.The spat between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar grew nastier. The British government threatened to take Spain to court. British warships recently dispatched to the Middle East are to visit Gibraltar; the Ministry of Defence said the stop had been "long planned". A left-wing Catalan nationalist party criticised the Spanish government for bullying the Gibraltarians.Russian police broke into an apartment they said was a base for Alexei Navalny's campaign in Moscow's mayoral election next month. The police arrested four people and confiscated leaflets. Mr Navalny, a well-known opposition blogger, was given a jail sentence in July but released on bail, allowing him to run in the mayoral race. A trial of alleged art thieves in Romania saw a surprise offer by the defendants to return valuable works by Picasso, Monet and other artists stolen fi-om a museum in Rotterdam last year, in exchange formoving their trial to theNetherlands. The mother of one defendant had earlier told poUce she had burned the paintings. Conviction politics America's attorney-general, Eric Holder, proposed big changes to criminal sentencing in federal cases, including "fundamentally rethinking" the idea of mandatory-minimum jail terms for drug-related offences. America's prison population has mushroomed over the past 30 years. Some states, such as Texas, have issued their own guidelines to reduce sentencing terms for non-violent crimes. At his first press conference in three months Barack Obama announced reforms to overseeing the National Security Agency's siu-veillance operations, and asked Congress to revisit the section of the Patriot Act that gives the government sweeping powers to collect phone-call data. Mr Obama defended the ns a's surveillance programmes but said the "American people need to have confidence" in them too. Critics said his reforms were too little, too late.