International-Jan-2009

CURRENT INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS:

Hasina wins Bangla polls: Bangladesh’s charismatic leader Sheikh Hasina, who favours strong ties with India, scripted a landslide victory on December 30, 2008, trouncing rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in the country’s first polls in seven years, restoring democracy in the impove-rished nation after two years of military-led rule. Hasina’s Awami League-led alliance clinched 258 seats of the total 300 seats in Parliament leaving only 31 constituencies to her arch rival Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led four-party alliance.

Israel clobbers Gaza: In retaliation to constant rocket attacks by Hamas militants in Gaza Strip, on December 27, 2008 Israel retaliated with air strikes on suspected Hamas hideouts. More than 300 people were killed in first 24 hours of the constant strikes by Israeli forces. Israeli leaders said the campaign was a response to almost daily cross-border rocket and mortar fire that intensified after Hamas, as Islamist group in charge of the coastal enclave Israel quit in 2005, ended a six-month ceasefire.

LTTE capital Kilinochchi falls to Lankan army: The Sri Lankan army took control of the northern town of Kilinochchi on January 2, 2009, the so- called administrative capital of the LTTE from where the Tigers ran a de facto State for nearly 10 years. The fall of Kilinochchi is of great symbolic importance as for many years the LTTE had maintained that government troops would never gain control of the area.

Students riot bring Greece to a halt: In the second week of December 2008, protesters attacked Athens’ main courthouse with firebombs during a hearing for police officers whose shooting of a teenager set off rioting. The strike shut down schools, public services, hospitals and flights, increasing pressure on the fragile conservative government of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis. Riot police and youths also clashed in the city center during a demonstration by more than 10,000 people to protest the conservative
government’s economic policies. The demonstrations and the strike, called by Greece’s two largest labour unions’ umbrella groups that include virtually all public sector and many private employees, were scheduled before the riots broke out. They were fuelled, however, by anger at the handling of the riots by the government, which holds a single-seat majority in the
Parliament.

Opposition leader is Thai PM: On December 15, 2008, Opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva was selected as Thailand’s third Prime Minister in as many months, taking control with a slender majority in Parliament and an economy teetering on the brink of recession. In a sign of the trouble in store for the Oxford-educated economist, at least 200 supporters of the previous administration, sacked by the courts earlier, blocked access to Parliament and smashed windows of cars carrying MPs who had backed him. Demonstrators denounced the 44-year-old as a front man for the military, which ousted elected leader Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006 and which has been accused of political meddling ever since. Born in Britain to a pair of medical professors, Abhisit was
educated at Eton college and then Oxford University, where he graduated with first class honours in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He entered the Thai Parliament in 1992 as one of its youngest members.

Russia, Ukraine gas row: On the first day of 2009, Russia and Ukraine looked no closer to compromise over a gas row that disrupted supplies to at least four European Union (EU) countries. Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria reported drops in supplies after Russian State-controlled gas export monopo-ly OAO Gazprom cut off Ukraine on New Year’s Day in a row over prices. The EU, which gets about one-fifth of its gas from pipelines that cross Ukraine, demanded that transit and supply contracts be honoured. Moscow said Kiev was stealing gas intended for Europe and playing political games. Ukraine accused Russia of using energy blackmail and of not providing enough gas for the proper functioning of the transit system. A similar dispute briefly disrupted supplies to Europe three years ago. That crisis prompted calls for the EU to diversify its energy supplies, but it has struggled to break its reliance on Russian gas. Some policy-makers see parallels with Russia’s treatment of Ukraine which, like Georgia, has angered the Kremlin by seeking to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation or NATO.

Worldwide bailouts 10 times bigger than Indian economy: In their efforts to tackle the global economic crisis, the rescue packages announced by the governments across the world have crossed 10 trillion-dollar mark (about Rs 50,00,000 crore), an amount equivalent to nearly 10 times the total size of Indian economy. The amount is believed to grow even bigger with the turmoil still being in expansion mode. A lion’s share of about three-fourth of the worldwide bailout package of about $ 10.1 trillion has come from the world’s biggest eco-nomy, the US, whose total national debt has also incidentally crossed the 10 trillion-dollar mark.

Nearly one billion hungry people worldwide: There are 963 million hungry people worldwide, or 40 million people more than in 2007, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). In its latest report on hunger worldwide, FAO has said this backward step stemmed mainly from soaring food prices and warned that the situation might become worse by the international economic crisis. According to the experts, the increase in the number of hungry people worldwide means that “in three years we lost virtually all progress made in 1990-2005.”

The great Madoff rip-off: Bernard L. Madoff, the 70-year-old founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities was arrested on December 11, 2008, for an alleged fraud of around $50 billion. If
convicted, he faces 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of $5 million. He was offering attractive returns to new investors and made it look as if he was investing in blue-chip stocks and options, but there was very little capital at the heart of the operation. He was actually running a Ponzi scheme—a pyramid scheme which uses cash from new customers or investors to pay returns to existing investors. It does little legitimate business, but just recycles money. The scheme depends on a constant stream of new investors to fund the payouts. Madoff kept few records and was clever at hiding the alleged fraud for 10 years.