The world this week - Politics
Original Text
Donald Trump deployed the national guard to the streets of Washington, DC, taking federal control of its policing operations. The order lasts for 30 days. Mr Trump evoked[1] his authority under the 1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act, the first time a president has used it to federalise the police, claiming that the city was awash in crime and homelessness. Violent crime surged in 2023 but fell by 35% last year to a 30 year low.
Mr.Trump was reported to have signed an order allowing America's forces to pursue drug cartels[2], possibly at sea or on foreign soil. Responding to the reports, Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico's president, "absolutely ruled out"[3] allowing American troops into her country. "We co-operate, we collaborate, but there is not going to be an invision", she said. Such collaboration includes the transfer this week of 26 suspected senior drug-gang members to the United States.
Miguel Uribe, a conservative senator who was a leading contender in the presidential election due next year in Colombia, died in a clinic two months after being shot by an assailant at a campaign rally. In 1991, his mother, a campaign journalist and daughter of a former president, was killed when Mr Uribe was four years old. Many Colombians fear a return to political violence.
Ecuador's president, Daniel Noboa, led a march to protest against the recent decision of the constitutional court to suspend parts of the country'snew security laws. The parts that are suspended include allowing intelligence officers to use fake identities, the use of surveillance technology and a presidential power to pardon security personnel convicted of criminal behaviour in their crackdown on gangs. The opposition supports the court's decision and claims that Mr Noboa's march threatened the judiciary's independence. At the demonstration the president said he had "the mandate[4] of the people".
Israel launched intense air strikes on Gaza city.The war cabinet voted in favour of seizing control of the city but has not said when it plans to do so. Israel killed six journalists in one of the strikes. It claimed that one of them, Anas al- Sharif, who worked for Al Jazeera, was a Hamas operative but provided no convincing evidence for the allegation. Last year Israel banned Al Jazeera, a popular Arab satellite channel, from reporting from Israel, alleging that it was a mouthpiece[5] for Hamas.
Hamas representatives arrived in Cairo for preliminary talks with Egyptian officials about a deal to end the war in Gaza.Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, suggested that he hoped any agreement would secure the release of all the hostages.
Fighting continued in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo between government troops and M23, a rebel group backed by Rwanda. Both sides accused the other of violating an agreement, signed in July, to work towards a permanent ceasefire. Congo and Rwanda also signed a peace deal in Washington in June.
At least 40 civilians were killed in an attack on el-Fasher, the capital of Sudan's North Darfur province, and a nearby refugee camp. The city has been under siege[6] by the Rapid Support Forces, one of the main parties in the civil war, since April 2024. The group has been accused of carrying out multiple atrocities[7] there.
The White House played down[8] expectations of Donald Trump's summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on August 15th, describing it as a "listening exercise". Volodymyr Zelensky called Mr Trump two days before the meeting and described their conversation as positive. Meanwhile, Russia was reported to have made its most significant military advance in Ukraine for at least a year. Russian troops gained 15km (nine miles) of ground in their drive to take a road leading to Kramatorsk, a city in the eastern Donbas region.
Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a peace deal brokered[9] by Mr Trump. The two countries have been in an intermittent[10] conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh since the fall of the Soviet empire. The agreement creates a transit corridor near the Iranian border for energy exports that America will have development rights to. Iran wasn't happy with that, and neither was Russia.
Finland became the first NATO country to lay criminal charges against a captain and crew of a ship in Russia's "shadow fleet"[11] for alleged sabotage[12] in the Baltic Sea. The captain and two officers of the Eagle S were charged with cutting underwater cables last December.
Rahul Gandhi, the official leader of the opposition in India's lower house of Parliament, and dozens of other senior opposition members were briefly detained[13] by police during a march on the country's Election Commission. Mr Gandhi and others say that voter lists in some states have been corrupted in order to rig[14] elections in favour of the ruling[15] Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP and the commission reject the claims.
The Philippines criticised China for carrying out "dangerous manoeuvres" in the South China Sea's disputed Scarborough Shoal. A Chinese coastguard ship collided with a Chinese naval vessel close to a Philippine coastguard ship that was delivering supplies to fishermen in the area. The Philippines claims that the Chinese vessels ran into each other as they tried to block its ship. China said later that it "drove away" a us destroyer that came close to the Shoal.
The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, a UN body, reported evidence of widespread "systematic torture" in Myanmar's detention facilities. This includes beatings, electric shocks, strangulations, gang rape and burning sexual body parts.
Donald Trump picked E.J. Antoni to lead the Bureau of Labour Statistics, having sacked the former head of the agency for what he claimed was its unfavourable manipulation of job-creation data (he has offered no evidence of this). Mr Antoni is the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, one of America's foremost conservative organisation.
Billy Long was defenestrated[16] as commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, less than two months into the job. Mr Long, a former Republican congressman, reportedly refused to hand over tax records on certain illegal immigrants and had clashed with Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary. Mr Bessent is now the IRS's interim[17] commissioner, the seventh person to head[18] the agency this year.
Annotations
evoke: from Latin evocare ("to call out"). In daily use, it means to bring about feelings or memories; in a political or legal context it means to invoke or exercise ↩︎
cartel: a group of independent market participants who collaborate with each other, agreeing not to compete in order to increase their profits and dominate the markets; a drug cartel refers to organized criminal networks producing and trafficking illegal drugs, often evading law enforcement ↩︎
rule out: to exclude or dismiss something from consideration ↩︎
mandate: an official order or commission to do something ↩︎
mouthpiece: originally a part of a device used in or near the mouth — here metaphorically refers to a person or media outlet that speaks on behalf of or promotes the views of someone else, implying a lack of independence ↩︎
siege: a military operation in which an army tries to capture a town by surrounding it and stopping the supply of food, etc ↩︎
atrocities: the plural of "atrocity", referring to extremely cruel, violent, or shocking acts ↩︎
play down: to downplay, to try to make something seem less important than it really is ↩︎
broker: to arrange a deal or negotiate; used as a noun means an agent who negotiates contracts ↩︎
intermittent: occurring at irregular intervals; not continuous or steady ↩︎
shadow fleet: also known as the dark fleet, refers to a group of vessels engaged in deceptive shipping practices ↩︎
sabotage: the act of doing deliberate damage to equipment, transport, machines, etc ↩︎
detain: from Latin detinere ("to hold back"). Commonly used in legal or police contexts to mean to hold someone in custody temporarily; rarely used in daily life to mean delay or hold back ↩︎
rig: to arrange the outcome of something (like an election or competition) unfairly ↩︎
ruling: describing the party that holds power, while other parties form the opposition ↩︎
defenestrate: throw (someone) out of a window, from Latin fenestra ("window"), now often used to remove or dismiss (someone) from a position of power or authority ↩︎
interim: temporary or provisional, often referring to a transitional period between two events or stages; as a noun, it can mean the period of time itself (in the interim) ↩︎
head: to lead or be in charge of an organization, department, or group ↩︎